Reject AI Prophecies, Free the Future

A growing number of organizations, from Silicon Valley tech outfits to a host of other big corporations, have begun linking AI use to performance evaluations. For many, survival in the workplace now involves investing substantial time and resources in learning how to collaborate with AI.

Yet, many may soon discover that these efforts do not necessarily make work smoother. Instead, they start to feel like obedience to a set of “prophecies.”

Consider claims such as: “AI will become your closest work partner,” “Everyone will have an AI assistant,” or “Companies that fail to adopt AI will be eliminated.” On face value, these statements seem to describe trends. In practice, they often discipline behavior: You better surrender your attention and judgment now, or you will be left behind.

My Oxford colleague Carissa Véliz, in her new book “Prophecy,” reminds us that the power of prophecy lies not in accurately predicting the future, but in shaping it.

For example, suppose a business owner believes that “AI will replace 80 percent of the workforce.” They may redesign performance systems, restructure teams and ultimately dismiss most of the employees. This does not prove that the prophecy was accurate. It proves that the prophecy is self-fulfilling.

Once the language of inevitability is accepted, people begin adjusting behavior accordingly, becoming part of the force that brings the prophecy into being.

Taiwan knows how to derail such narratives. In the 1980s, technology-intensive industries were widely seen as impossible to develop on our island of resilience. Today, we have TSMC. And at the beginning of the pandemic, some predicted that Taiwan would not survive the first wave. What later became clear is that many things described as “inevitable” were merely scripts that seemed plausible at the time.

When facing a prophecy, what matters most is always how we choose to respond.

If we want to free the future, the first and most important step is looking for collaborators. Whether the semiconductor industry or the pandemic response, it was collective action that overturned the prophecy.

So, is it inevitable that AI will replace human labor?

As infrastructure, AI may lower certain barriers to collaboration as it is used more frequently. But when the AI debate becomes a machine for manufacturing anxiety, the real questions we should ask are: What exactly do we want to use it for? For whom are we building it? And which values must we protect?

This is also why Silicon Valley tech outfits are inviting philosophers to take part in discussions on AI alignment, safety and institutional design. When people form emotional attachments to AI, or begin debating whether machines have consciousness, these are no longer merely engineering questions. They are questions about what kind of society we want to take shape.

If there was only one path into the future, none of these discussions would be necessary. It is precisely because multiple futures remain possible that prophecies deserve to be challenged.

So, whenever you hear that “a trend is irreversible,” the more important question to ask is this: Is it truly a prediction, or is it a command?

Refusing inevitability does not mean rejecting technology. As long as we remain willing to deliberate, govern and build together, the future need not become the extension of a prophecy. It can become something we write and free — together.

(Interview and Compilation by Yu-Tang You. License: CC BY 4.0)