Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI

From an award-winning University of Oxford professor comes a brilliant, urgent new look at prophecies--the predictions that determine our lives, from our personal finances and the quality of our healthcare to the news and social media we consume and the products foisted upon us.

Today's computer scientists play the same role as the oracles of the ancient world and the astrologers of the Middle Ages. Modern predictions not only advise on war, crop output, and marriages, but algorithms and statisticians also now determine whether we can get a loan, a job, an apartment, or an organ transplant. And when we cede ground to these predictions, we lose control of our own lives.

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 insights: 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.

Author: Carissa Veliz
Publisher: Doubleday Books
Published: 04/21/2026
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.23lbs
Size: 9.52h x 6.54w x 1.27d
ISBN: 9780385550970


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2026
Publishers Weekly 02/02/2026

About the Author
Carissa Véliz is an associate professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford. Her first book, Privacy Is Power (Melville House) was an Economist book of the year and has been published in seven languages. Her academic work has been published in The Harvard Business Review, Nature, AI & Society, and The American Journal of Bioethics, among others. She is the author of the forthcoming The Ethics of Privacy and Surveillance (Oxford University Press) and the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics.