How predictions took over our lives

We've outsourced our future to prediction machines — from sports betting apps that turn corner kicks into financial gambles, to AI systems that claim to foresee our health, jobs, and even our fate. The result? A society obsessed with control, where every moment is monetized and every decision is framed as a bet. As philosopher Carissa Veliz warns, these aren’t neutral forecasts — they’re power plays disguised as facts, shaping behavior, reinforcing bias, and creating self-fulfilling prophecies. When insurers raise premiums based on AI predictions of poor health, they may actually cause the illness they predicted. When employers use algorithms to screen job applicants, they’re not just assessing risk — they’re building a future that’s harder to escape. Yet we’re not powerless. Writer Simone Stoltsoff shows that embracing uncertainty — not avoiding it — is the real path to agency. By designing small acts of randomness into our lives, we can rebuild our tolerance for the unknown and reclaim the ability to shape our own futures, rather than passively waiting for a prediction to define us.