ABOUT THIS BOOK

This is an audiobook version of this book.

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, job interviews, and wars. The ubiquity of AI is so great that it might produce 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 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 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 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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Maximilian Kasy is professor of economics at the University of Oxford; previously he was an associate professor of economics at Harvard University. His research focuses on machine learning and the social impact of AI.

REVIEWS

“AI will solve the problems its owners want solved. Kasy’s book shows how. But its greater contribution is cutting through the complexities of the subject to illustrate the necessity and feasibility of democratic control over the means of prediction: the data, hardware, technical expertise, and energy that make AI possible. A simple but powerful message—and a fantastic book.”

— Dani Rodrik, Harvard University

"This bold and accessible book reminds us that we are not in a conflict between humans and machines, but between power and the public interest."

— Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AI

“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 who it serves and who 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

“A very timely book. And—having pondered who it was aimed at—probably one that every official and politician should be made to read as they chirrup about using AI in public services.”

— Diane Coyle, Enlightened Economist

“Forget killer robots and superintelligent machines — Oxford economist Maximilian Kasy reveals that the real story of AI is far more fascinating, and far more human in his new book . . . . If you want to understand not just how AI works, but how it fits into the bigger picture of economic and political power, this is a good place to start.”

— Ellsworth Toohey, Boing Boing

“Kasy’s provocative thesis exposes AI’s objectives as deliberate choices, encoded by those who control its resources to favor profit over social good. Only by seizing democratic control of the means of prediction can we ensure that AI serves society at large rather than the profits of tech giants. . . . Kasy reminds us that AI is not an autonomous force but a social relation, an instrument of class power that can be retooled for collective ends. The question is whether we have the political will to seize it.”

— Giorgos Galanis, Jacobin

“Rather than treating AI as an unstoppable technological wave, Kasy invites readers to see it as a political and social choice. In a world already shaped by inequality, he argues that AI will deepen existing divides unless it’s placed under public and democratic control.

His framework is analytical and visionary, a blend of economics, ethics, and practical insight into how society might reclaim agency over one of the most consequential technologies of our time.”

— Sandra Cruz, SA Examiner

"[Kasy] deftly circumvents all the more salacious stories about the future of artificial intelligence. . . to throw a loop around what ‘stuff’ is being built to create AI futures, and how this can be a tool of ‘prediction’, and the desirability of it all being part of a democratic coordination rather than evidence of spiraling inequality."

— University of Oxford "Off the Shelf" Column

“In The Means of Prediction, economist Maximilian Kasy offers something refreshingly different: a political economy of Artificial Intelligence. While debate rages about whether AI will deliver us from material scarcity, impoverish the world’s workers, or transform us into paper clips, Kasy offers a plain, forceful, and almost self-evidently correct reframing: the fundamental conflicts surrounding AI are not between humans and machines but among humans with divergent interests. . . . The Means of Prediction makes a searing contribution to an otherwise overcrowded genre by reframing AI governance as fundamentally a question of political economy rather than engineering. . . . For economists, social scientists, and policymakers accustomed to thinking about inequality, decision rights, and collective action, Kasy provides the conceptual vocabulary to engage with AI on familiar terrain.”

— David Autor, Journal of Economic Literature

"Kasy argues that engineers, entrepreneurs and corporations are shaping Artificial Intelligence to advance their own interests and not those of society, and that governments must regulate the technology to address this problem. In developing his argument, the author provides an admirably clear and compact explanation – the best one out there – of what AI is, and what it can and cannot do."

— Barry Eichengreen, Smart Thinking Books

“If the thought of a ubiquitous, mostly invisible predictive layer secretly grafted onto your life by a bunch of profit-hungry corporations makes you uneasy . . . well, same here. This arrangement is leading to a crueler, blander, more instrumentalized world, one where life’s possibilities are foreclosed, age-old prejudices are entrenched, and everyone’s brain seems to be actively turning into goo. It’s an outcome, according to Kasy, that was entirely predictable.”

— Bryan Gardiner, MIT Review

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I. Introduction

Part II. How AI Works

Part III. Machine Power

Part IV. Regulating Algorithms

Part V. Old Problems, New Challenges