A “centaur” is a human helped by a machine: the person sets the direction, the machine supplies the horsepower, and together they are better than either one alone.
Tech activist Cory Doctorow’s nightmare is the reverse centaur: a human conscripted to serve a machine. His key example is the delivery driver whose route, pace and bathroom breaks are dictated by an algorithm. The machine does the thinking; the human supplies a cheap, disposable body.
Doctorow is the science fiction novelist who gave us “enshittification”: the word for how tech platforms start off as free and amazing, until tech companies need to turn a profit – then you become the product, and the platform becomes sludge.
Review: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It’s Too Late by Cory Doctorow (Verso)
This time, he argues the AI industry’s most valuable product is a lie: “AI is about to make workers obsolete.” Every time we repeat the lie, we help a salesman convince our boss to replace us with cheaper software that can’t properly do our job.
