The Power of Predictions with Carissa Véliz

Most of the predictions you encounter every day are closer to the realm of power than the realm of knowledge — and once you see that, you can't unsee it.

Oxford philosopher Carissa Véliz joins Dave to talk about her new book Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI. From the Oracle of Delphi (less a holy shrine than a thriving business) to court astrologers, credit scores, and large language models, Véliz argues that predictions are speech acts — veiled commands that bend reality toward themselves. Whoever owns the prediction machines is making a bid to own the future.

Dave and Carissa dig into the rise of prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi — anonymous wallets funded hours before an attack on Iran, journalists bullied over bets, newsrooms reporting odds as news — plus AI's "monoculture of sameness," why existential-risk panic distracts from AI-enabled authoritarianism, and why refusing to obey in advance starts with refusing the self-fulfilling prophecy. The conversation ends where it must: democracy is never won, only fought for and built every single day.

Carissa Véiz — Associate Professor at Oxford's Faculty of Philosophy and Institute for Ethics in AI; author of Privacy Is Power and Prophecy.

Get the book - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/239151058-prophecy

TED 2026 talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4wHmKtH-Q

X - @CarissaVeliz

Chapters

00:00 - Cold open & intro

01:30 - Meet Carissa Véliz & the origins of Prophecy

04:37 - Ancient oracles: prediction has always been a business

07:10 - Dread, marketing & why predictions are never facts

09:51 - What makes an honest forecast? Weather vs. people

12:31 - Prediction markets: from PredictIt to Polymarket

15:27 - Insider wallets & the bet on the Iran attack

17:39 - Betting markets meet super PAC politics

20:10 - When newsrooms report bets as news

21:35 - AI as prediction machine: the monoculture of sameness

26:00 - How a digital ethicist actually uses AI

30:50 - Breaking out: serendipity, reading, defying the curve

33:47 - Philosophy as the antidote to prophecy

36:19 - Bayesian priors, agency & refusing to obey in advance

40:44 - Democracy, community & the inconvenient good life

45:17 - From Privacy Is Power to Prophecy

47:49 - Past the event horizon? Against defeatism

51:06 - Reading as an act of defiance

52:33 - Outro & links

Dave Troy Presents is published by America 2.0.