Cory Doctorow

It’s not enough to ask what the technology does – we must understand who it’s doing it for and who it’s doing it to

As we enter the age of AI, we are in danger of being reduced to what Cory Doctorow dubs the ‘reverse centaur’. With that term he conjures a human being conscripted as the assistant to a dominant machine. It could be a driver made to deliver nonstop, all day long; a warehouse worker packing shelves without bathroom or food breaks; or a programmer reviewing impossible amounts of AI-produced code.

Don’t fall for the hype! The billionaires managing the rise of AI are putting on a command performance for the bosses and investors, not for the ordinary people who might use the products. When this latest tech bubble bursts, will there be something useful for us in the wreckage?

In The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, Doctorow examines why we find ourselves in this mess and how we can get out of it. Life after AI should mean the tools work for us, not the other way around. 

How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI

Karolina

AI hucksters want you to believe all the things they call “AI” are coming and that when they arrive, there is only one conceivable way that we could use them. This is just high-tech Thatcherism, the inevitabilist move of a bully who insists that they’re only doing what implacable reality demands of them.

Practically everyone who falls for the AI hype is dreaming of getting a human need fulfilled without having to extend moral consideration.

They call it “generative AI” but it can’t generate any meaning. All it can do is add vaporous filler to meaning that is contained in a human user’s prompt.

Every bubble is a transfer of wealth from savers to crooks.

The job of a good AI critic is to help pop the bubble as quickly as possible, before the walls of all our institutions are filled with this digital asbestos that we’ll be digging out for generations. To be a good AI critic is to understand the material origins of the bubble, and to strike at the material factors that keep it inflated.

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI quotes

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