14/09/2026
When AI predicts our choices, does it also begin to shape them?
We are delighted to announce Carissa Véliz, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, as a keynote speaker at the OEB 2026 Opening Plenary.
Carissa is one of the most compelling critical voices examining the power increasingly exercised through AI: the mass collection of personal data, the use of prediction to influence behaviour and decision-making, and the consequences for privacy, autonomy and democracy.
Her latest book, "Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future", challenges the assumption that ever greater powers of prediction necessarily represent progress. Instead, she asks what is lost when institutions and technologies increasingly seek to anticipate, categorise and shape human behaviour.
At OEB, Carissa will turn that critical lens on education. She warns that AI is not only enabling students to externalise learning, but risks eroding the individual and collective agency we may be wise to retain. Against that backdrop, Sovereign Learning: Trust, Agency & the Education Reset raises a fundamental question: how much power are we prepared to hand over to systems that increasingly observe, predict and influence us?
📍 Berlin | 2–4 December 2026
📖 Learn more about Carissa Véliz with the link in the bio.
