4 hours
Reference Point
Free Tickets Available
Mon, 03 Nov, 2025 at 07:00 pm to 11:00 pm (GMT+00:00)
Reference Point
2 Arundel Street, London, United Kingdom
Maximilian Kasy, professor of machine learning and economics at Oxford, will introduce his new book, and discuss how the usual stories about AI are misleading, and why democratic control of AI is necessary.
After his presentation, there will be a discussion with Noam Yuchtman, professor of political economy at LSE, on how the politics of AI and its regulation might play out in the next few years.
There will be time for audience questions.
About the book:
An eye-opening examination of how power—not technology—will define life with AI. Artificial intelligence is inescapable, from its mundane uses online to its increasingly consequential responsibility for decision-making in courtrooms, job interviews, and wars. The ubiquity of AI is so great that it could induce public resignation—a sense that the technology is our shared fate. But as economist Maximilian Kasy shows in The Means of Prediction, AI, far from being an unstoppable force, is irrevocably shaped by human decisions—choices made to date by the ownership class that steers its development and deployment. Kasy shows that the technology of AI is ultimately not that complex. It is insidious, however, in its capacity to steer results toward its owners’ wants and ends. Kasy clearly and accessibly explains the fundamental principles on which AI works and, in doing so, reveals that the real conflict isn’t between humans and machines but between those who control the machines and the rest of us. The Means of Prediction offers a powerful vision of the future of AI: a future shaped not by technology but by the technology’s owners. Amid a deluge of debates about technical details, new possibilities, and social problems, Kasy cuts to the core issue: Who controls AI’s objectives, and how is this control maintained? The answer lies in what he calls “the means of prediction,” or the essential resources required for building AI systems: data, computing power, expertise, and energy. As Kasy shows, in a world already defined by inequality, one of humanity’s most consequential technologies has been and will be steered by those already in power. Against those stakes, Kasy offers an elegant framework both for understanding AI’s capabilities and for designing its public control. He makes a compelling case for democratic control over AI objectives as the answer to mounting concerns about AI’s risks and harms. The Means of Prediction is a revelation, both an expert undressing of a technology that has masqueraded as more complicated than it really is and a compelling call for public oversight of this transformative technology.
“The future of AI, including its worst-case scenarios, will not be determined by the technology itself. It will be determined by our choices and the institutions that govern how AI will develop, including whom it serves and whom it harms. The Means of Prediction provides an excellent introduction to how power struggles and ideologies are intertwined with technology and how the current trajectory will likely lead to ruin rather than abundance.”—Daron Acemoglu, author of Why Nations Fail and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
About the author:
Maximilian Kasy is professor of economics at the University of Oxford; previously, he was associate professor of economics at Harvard University. His research focuses on machine learning and the social impact of AI.
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Tickets for Book Launch for The Means of Prediction by Maximilian Kasy can be booked here.
Ticket type | Ticket price |
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General Admission | Free |