Carissa Veliz's 'Prophecy': AI predictions are power plays leveraging our anxiety
CarissaVeliz · x · 2026-10-05
A recommended excerpt from Carissa Veliz's book Prophecy argues that forecasters seek power: they package uncertain predictions as certainties, exploiting public anxiety about the future.
The quoted thread adds an observation: those most optimistic about AI and most willing to call BS on doom narratives tend to be veterans with decades of experience in software, infrastructure, and security, while doom rhetoric originates inside the AI bubble and flows downstream to politicians and parrots — with much of its 'evidence' being anecdotal.
Related event: Oxford Scholar Véliz Argues AI Predictions Are Power Plays in Disguise(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Nabeel Qureshi: Knowing How Computers Work Makes You Worse at Predicting the Future — nabeelqu · 2026-10-05
- Nobel laureate Kahneman: humans are too noisy — replace them with algorithms wherever possible — sudoraohacker · 2026-10-05
- Agents may spread from work to personal life, reversing consumer tech's usual path — vivekhaldar · 2026-10-05
- Claude's 'Strange Constitution': legal scholar says Anthropic's AI personality framing weakens accountability — LuizaJarovsky · 2026-10-05
- If Future AIs Become Conscious, Should They Also Get Drunk? The Altered-States Argument — ZeroStateReflex · 2026-10-05
- Pundit predicts AI wins Fields Medal by 2028, Nobel not crazy by 2030 — gabriberton · 2026-10-05