Automated Futures: AI, Prediction, and Democratic Decision-Making

From climate forecasting and geopolitical prediction platforms to AI-powered divination apps and algorithmic markets, predictive technologies are becoming influential intermediaries in how individuals, institutions, and governments assess risks and choose courses of action. This project investigates how AI is transforming democratic decision-making by influencing which futures are considered credible and worth governing. While predictive systems are often presented as neutral tools, they can shape public priorities, distribute authority, and affect who has the power to define collective futures. Bringing together perspectives from science and technology studies, data science, and policy research, the project examines three interconnected domains of AI-mediated prediction: collective futures (such as climate and geopolitical forecasting), intimate futures (including personalized prediction and divination applications), and speculative futures (such as prediction markets and algorithmic finance). Across these domains, the project explores how AI makes uncertainty governable and how predictive systems increasingly participate in democratic processes. By comparing scientific, symbolic, and market-based forms of prediction, the project seeks to understand how AI is reshaping public trust, institutional authority, and democratic governance in an age when decisions about the future are increasingly delegated to predictive technologies.