An eye-opening examination of how power--not technology--will define life with AI. AI is inescapable, from its mundane uses online to its increasingly consequential decision-making in courtrooms, employment interviews, and wars. The ubiquity of AI is so great that it's even produced public resignation--a sense that the technology is our shared fate.
As economist Maximilian Kasy shows in
The Means of Prediction, artificial intelligence, far from being an unstoppable force, is irrevocably shaped by human decisions--choices made to date by the ownership class steering its development and deployment. Kasy shows that the technology of AI is not complex. It is insidious, however, in its capacity to steer results to 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 not shaped 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 in centuries 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 and a compelling call for public oversight of this transformative technology.
一部發人深省的作品，揭示了將如何定義 AI 時代生活的，不是技術，而是權力。
AI 無所不在：從網路上的日常應用，到它在法庭、求職面試與戰爭中日益攸關重大結果的決策。AI 的普及程度如此之高，甚至造成了公眾的無力感——人們開始認為，這項技術就是我們共同的命運。
經濟學家 Maximilian Kasy 在《The Means of Prediction》中指出，人工智慧遠非一股無法阻擋的力量，而是不可避免地受到人類決策的形塑——截至目前，這些決策都是由掌控其發展與部署的資產擁有階級所做出。Kasy 說明，AI 技術本身並不複雜；然而，它具有將結果導向其擁有者所期望的目標與利益的能力，因此格外隱蔽而危險。Kasy 以清晰易懂的方式解釋 AI 運作所依據的基本原理，並藉此揭示：真正的衝突並非發生在人類與機器之間，而是在控制機器的人與其餘所有人之間。
《The Means of Prediction》提出了一幅強而有力的 AI 未來圖景：這個未來並非由技術塑造，而是由技術的擁有者所形塑。在充斥著技術細節、新可能性與社會問題的討論中，Kasy 直指核心問題：誰控制 AI 的目標？這種控制又是如何維持的？答案就在他所稱的「預測的手段」（the means of prediction）之中，也就是建構 AI 系統所需的基本資源：資料、運算能力、專業知識與能源。正如 Kasy 所展示的，在一個早已由不平等所定義的世界裡，人類數百年來最具深遠影響的技術之一，過去一直由掌權者引導，未來也將如此。
面對如此重大的利害關係，Kasy 提出了一套優雅的架構，既能幫助我們理解 AI 的能力，也能協助我們設計對 AI 的公共控制機制。他有力地主張，應由民主機制控制 AI 的目標，這是回應人們對 AI 風險與傷害日益加劇之疑慮的解方。《The Means of Prediction》令人耳目一新：它既是專家對一項偽裝成極其複雜之技術的透徹剖析，也是對這項轉型性技術進行公共監督的有力呼籲。
