EagleEye

Guest Lecture: Mona Sloane on how AI is Restructuring Social Life, Oct. 21

Guest Lecture: Predicted: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life
Date & Time: Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 4 p.m. (reception to follow)
Location: Weatherly Wing, Seacobeck Hall
Sponsor: The Center for AI and the Liberal Arts (CAILA)

We usually talk about AI as a technology with social consequences. Dr. Sloane argues it is something else: a new kind of social infrastructure, one that installs prediction as an organizing principle of social life. Drawing on her new book, Predicted (University of California Press, 2026), she shows that AI’s effects are not simply downstream of engineering decisions. AI systems grow out of social practices, institutional logics, and professional authority, and then remake them. The prediction paradigm forecloses debate before it starts, settling questions about our shared future in places most of us never see. Making those arrangements visible is what puts them back up for discussion. The talk is an argument for recouping collective deliberation in the age of AI, about which futures with AI we want, and what innovation is actually for.

About the Speaker:
Dr. Sloane leads the Sloane Lab at UVA, where she studies how AI gets embedded into everyday life. Her book, Predicted: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life, was published in May 2026 by the University of California Press. Learn more at https://datascience.virginia.edu/people/mona-sloaneand https://www.monasloane.org.

A Note for Faculty:
If you would like to encourage or require your students to attend, CAILA will have student attendance sheets available at the event. We will send the completed sheets to faculty afterward so you can confirm attendance for your courses. We hope to see you there! Please share this invitation with students and colleagues who may be interested.