One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI – and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience of time and the future and challenges our identities, yet we are blinded by its efficiency and fail to understand how it affects us.

At the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase our control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future. This happens when we forget that that we humans have created the digital technologies to which we attribute agency. These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care.

As we try to adjust to a world in which algorithms, robots and avatars play an ever-increasing role, we need to understand better the limitations of AI and how their predictions affect our agency, while at the same time having the courage to embrace the uncertainty of the future.

About the Author

Helga Nowotny is former President of the European Research Council. She is Professor Emerita of Social Studies of Science at ETH Zurich.

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Goodwill Southern California - We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to help transform lives through the power of work. Goodwill Southern California serves individuals with disabilities or other vocational disadvantages and local businesses seeking qualified employees by providing education, skills training, work experience and job placement. In addition to our retail stores located throughout Southern California and in the Inland Empire, we also provide jobs and services such as secure shredding, e-recycling (computers and electronics), packaging and assembling, post retail recycling, etc. If you would like to know more about our company, our services, partnership opportunities or to make a donation, please either visit our website goodwillsocal.org, or contact us at our toll-free number, 1 (888) 4 GOODWILL. Thank you for your support of our mission to help others.

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