The Fight for the Future: AI, Privacy & Power with CARISSA VÉLIZ

About this episode

Carissa Véliz discusses the implications of AI and privacy on democracy and ethics.

“Algorithms are deciding whether you are eligible for a loan, a job, an apartment or insurance. They determine what you see online, who reads your social media posts and who connects with you on dating apps. They may even decide whether you get arrested or go to jail. Your very life hangs in the balance of prophecies.” In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Carissa Véliz , an associate professor at the University of Oxford, about her new book, Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future—from Ancient Oracles to AI . Linking this work to her previous book, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data , Véliz writes: “ surveillance and prediction are digital technology’s original sins.” In our wide-ranging discussion, we talk about how both massive and intrusive invasions of privacy at all levels of society and false claims to be able to predict the future erode democracy, are corrosive to ethics, and undermine people’s ability to think for themselves. Instead, we are conditioned to trust an unregulated band of “effective altruists” who claim to know better than we what kinds of lives we…

People in this episode

Host: David Palumbo-Liu

Guest: Carissa Véliz

Topics covered

• AI
• privacy
• democracy
• surveillance
• ethics
• data control

Keywords

• AI
• privacy
• surveillance
• democracy
• data control
• ethics
• prediction

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Oxford

Books & works: Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future—from Ancient Oracles to AI, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data

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