AI Coffee Klatch in the Library: Prophecy by Carissa Véliz

The quarterly AI Coffee Klatch in the Valley Library is open to OSU faculty, instructors, staff, and graduate students. Coffee will be provided! Attendance is limited to 20; registration is required.

We understand you may not have time to read the entire book, so please come to the conversation having read Chapter 1, "Prophets and Power: A brief history of predication, or why astrologers get thrown off cliffs"

You can find the book in our library!

Hosts: Laurie Bridges, Director, AI Literacy Center and Humanities Librarian, and Kelly McElroy, Engagement and Outreach Librarian

From the publisher
In this powerful, refreshing new look at the many ways prediction shapes our everyday lives, University of Oxford professor Carissa Véliz explains how putting too much stock in others' predictions makes us vulnerable to charlatans, con artists, dubious technology, and self-deception. Examining a wide range of subjects both personal and societal, including medicine, climate, technology, society, and others, Véliz uncovers a number of predictions about humans tend to be self-fulfilling; more data doesn't guarantee better outcomes; AI is more likely to increase risk than decrease it; and a free and robust society requires not more prediction, but better preparation.
Véliz argues in this incisive and bracingly original book that the main promise of prediction is not knowledge of the future, but rather power over others. Prophecy is an invitation to defy those orders and live life on our own terms.