We live today increasingly under the tyranny of algorithms. They rule over us. They shape what we say and how we interact with each other. They shape behavior. They affect whether people get jobs and other essential things in life. And algorithms kill people.

Algorithms work behind the curtains, cloaked in secrecy, often unaccountable.

Algorithmic Predictions about Human Behavior

Yuki Matsumi and I wrote about the dangers of algorithmic predictions in The Prediction Society: AI and the Problems of Forecasting the Future, 2025 U. Ill. L. Rev. (2025). We argue that algorithms that attempt to forecast the future and impede human autonomy in the process.

Increasingly, algorithmic predictions are used to make decisions about credit, insurance, sentencing, education, and employment. We contend that algorithmic predictions are being used “with too much confidence, and not enough accountability. Ironically, future forecasting is occurring with far too little foresight.”

We contend that algorithmic predictions “shift control over people’s future, taking it away from individuals and giving the power to entities to dictate what people’s future will be.” Algorithmic predictions do not work like a crystal ball, looking to the future. Instead, they look to the past. They analyze patterns in past data and assume that these patterns will persist into the future. Instead of predicting the future, algorithmic predictions fossilize the past. We argue: “Algorithmic predictions not only forecast the future; they also create it.”

Additionally, we contend: “Algorithms are not adept at handling unexpected human swerves. For an algorithm, such swerves are noise to be minimized. But swerves are what make humanity different from machines.”

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