The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence – Before It’s Too LateBy Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow has, by his own estimation, produced over 30 books. Whenever you pick up Doctorow, there’s a real question: Is it going to be a thrillingly controversial, like, “Enshitification,” which is required reading if you want to understand why Amazon and Yelp recommendations have become useless? Or will it be like one of those other Doctors who sank beneath the waves and never to be seen again?
In a sense, doctors have to be prolific. He writes about the effects of technology at a time when technology is advancing so rapidly that only by writing at breakneck speed can one hope to keep up. I, for one, am grateful. To me, he resembles the great rock critics of an earlier era, the high-tech Greil Marcus or even Lester Bangs. He has a useful combination of factual knowledge and keen observation.
In “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI,” Doctorow takes aim at artificial intelligence with a clever image: a horse’s head on a man’s body. a centaur, in automation theoryOne is a human being assisted by a machine. In Doctorow’s coinage, the “reverse centaur” is “a human being appointed to act as an assistant”. To a machine.” The idea is to propose a simple division between human and nonhuman uses of artificial intelligence based on which is the head.
AI is a more intriguing topic than any other technology that doctors have dealt with. Its mechanisms and effects are more mysterious, and it is already surrounded by tangled vines of hype and hysteria. Doctorow is at his best in the space between satire and genuine insight. Unfortunately, AI isn’t particularly well suited for that kind of treatment.
As expected, on the anatomy of Silicon Valley’s rhetoric and self-praise, on how much humanity has put itself in danger of maintaining the high price-to-earnings ratios of tech companies, and on the “Byzantine premium” that “investors invest on assets they don’t understand.” He is fantastic. He gives one of the most convincing arguments I have read for what will happen when the AI bubble bursts. “No matter how much you hate AI, it will not be a good day,” he writes. “Remember: Seven giant AI companies account for 35 percent of the US stock market.”
But his tendency towards humanism, while admirable, can lead to overly simplistic generalizations about technology. He writes, “Practically everyone who falls for the AI hype is dreaming of meeting a human need without ethical consideration.” “This is as true of AI girlfriends as it is of bosses who are hoping to use AI to replace half their employees and terrorize the remainder.” I’m not sure you could call them “AI Girlfriend Weird”, while by some estimates, one in five Young adults in the US are romantically linked with AI
AI is also so new that it demands very un-doctor-like equations. “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that, in 10 years, I’ll look back at this moment and say, ‘I can’t believe I thought AI prompts couldn’t make good art’ (I also wouldn’t rule out the possibility that, in 10 years, we’ll all look back at this moment and say, ‘I can’t believe we ever thought AI art could ever be good’).” This is absolutely accurate. This is not very useful either.
Their main plan to preserve human expression under the onslaught of AI is to copy Hollywood writers who strike on AI in 2023. This statement from one of the most visionary writers alive seems strangely old: There is strength in a union.
Nevertheless, Doctorow holds technology to a standard that has otherwise been forgotten: it must have the potential for human liberation, in the anarchic spirit of constraints. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how relevant that approach is at this point, especially given the enormous change represented by artificial intelligence.
Like earlier rock critics – maintaining the original spirit of rock ‘n’ roll as money and celebrity and drugs swallowed the entire business – Doctorow tries to preserve the original promise of the technology. In 2026, this is a refreshingly unusual concept. I just want it to feel more like a vision of a possible future than a trip down memory lane.
The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: : How to Think About Artificial Intelligence – Before It’s Too Late | By Cory Doctorow | mcdxfsg | 225 pp. | Paperback, $18
