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Abstract:
The final lecture surveys some areas where social actors are judged on the basis of predictions about their individual future behavior and then suffer consequences according to that forecast. Assessing creditworthiness requires predicting the likelihood of a person’s (or a corporation’s or a government’s) future payment behavior. Competitive university admission is based on a separate prognosis of the future promise of every student applicant. Fighting and even punishing crime is increasingly preventative, relying on predictions of lawbreaking yet to happen: the police use profiling to maintain order, and parole boards decide when to release each convict by considering the likelihood of future recidivism. We compare these three areas and conclude by considering some of the larger social consequences of the use of various predictive technologies.
