Cory Doctorow's latest polemic, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, delivers a vivid and entertaining dissection of the economics behind the AI revolution, filled with righteous ire and sharp analogies. The book argues that public backlash against AI is not about the technology itself but the way it is being deployed by Silicon Valley oligarchs to prioritize investor hype over human welfare.
Public backlash against AI is growing
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt learned this firsthand when he was loudly booed during a commencement address at the University of Arizona, where students faced an AI-ravaged job market. His discombobulation was telling. Schmidt is not alone: every week brings stories of writers, publishers, or academics who have torched their reputations by using unreliable chatbots. Most US voters oppose the construction of vast, resource-guzzling datacenters, and a majority believe AI will negatively impact jobs, creativity, and human relationships. As a New York Times column put it: “AI populism is here. And no one is ready.”
A decade ago, when Elon Musk and Sam Altman were still advocating for heavily regulated ethical AI, the technology's most discussed downside had apocalyptic glamour: superintelligent AI could destroy humanity. But since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, AI's public image has fallen to earth. It is now widely seen as a job crusher, fact mangler, slop maker, privacy invader, climate trasher, and general pain in the neck. Doctorow's book pithily explains why.
The reverse centaur metaphor
Doctorow, who writes like he talks and talks like he writes, has produced his 36th book, hard on the heels of last year's Enshittification. That polemic expanded on his neologism to describe why Big Tech's grow-or-die business model has made online platforms worse. This tawdry contempt for customers is one reason AI is reviled. The Silicon Valley oligarchs telling us AI will change the world are the last people we trust to change it for the better. As a technology, AI has pros and cons; as a rushed project of rapacious elites, it is transparently obscene.
The central metaphor of The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI illustrates that Doctorow is not anti-AI. A centaur, in automation theory, is someone assisted by a machine, like a person using a hearing aid or driving a car. A reverse centaur is someone whose freedom is diminished by the demands of a machine, like an Amazon warehouse worker. The technology of AI theoretically allows every worker to be a centaur, but the business model demands the reverse. For example, in radiology, a human radiologist working with an AI radiologist could produce more accurate analysis, but that costs the hospital money. In the reverse centaur version, the AI demotes surviving humans to results-checking drones who are more likely to make mistakes. Much cheaper, but the problem is clear.
AI as a bubble driven by investor hype
Doctorow, a science fiction novelist, cites one of the genre's defining messages: “The most important thing about the gadget isn't what it does, it's who it does it for and who it does it to.” Just as the Luddites were not angry with machines per se, most anti-AI sentiment is really anti-capitalist rather than anti-tech. Doctorow uses a framework a 19th-century socialist would recognise: bosses will pull every trick to avoid paying workers more unless workers unionise to fight back.
The problem with the AI business is the same as what drives enshittification. The improbable price-to-sales ratios of tech companies are based on promises of future growth, hence high-stakes bets like the Metaverse or Google+. The AI sector's colossal valuation derives largely from the salaries of the human workers it aims to replace – Morgan Stanley predicts it will add almost a trillion dollars a year to the S&P 500. Because the net worth of tech bosses is tied to stock value rather than actual profits, they have a personal incentive to keep investors excited: today AI may be a money pit, but just you wait.
If the investor is the real target of the AI industry's marketing, then the consumer becomes a cog in the hype machine. Individuals using chatbots are not so much a crucial revenue stream as unwitting salespeople for the message that machines will replace us any day now. Journalists who cover snake-oil absurdities like the AI-generated “actor” Tilly Norwood also play this role.
The doctrine of inevitabilism
Doctorow despises the doctrine of “inevitabilism,” which he explains via Margaret Thatcher's slogan “there is no alternative.” When Eric Schmidt told students, “[If] someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on,” that was inevitabilism. The idea is that revolutionary new technology gives workers and consumers no choice but to get on board. Yet the technology is shaped by choices made by people like Schmidt, and they are not inevitable at all. If you give people an ultimatum – use our product or suffer – booing is the least you can expect.
One thing to give anti-AI hardliners pause is Doctorow's suggestion that the industry is deliberately juicing outrage about AI-generated art as a form of hype: if people are this scared and angered, then the promise of replacing human labour must be real. In this book, he is not animated by headline-grabbing concerns like existential risk, AI psychosis, deepfake porn, or election disinformation, because those are unintended consequences. His target is the revenue model and the bubble it has created: “To be an effective AI critic, you need to strike at the source of AI's power, which is the investment capital it attracts.”
The bubble and its risks
It certainly looks like a bubble. Last year, two studies found that 90% of people are less likely to use a product if it is advertised as AI-enabled, and that 95% of generative AI pilot schemes are failing. Many companies have been forced to hastily rehire employees they had replaced with inadequate chatbots. For gen Zs, according to an NBC poll, AI has a favourability rating of minus 44. As Doctorow writes, “The tech platforms are desperate to convince Wall Street that you love AI, which is very different from convincing you that you love AI.”
Unfortunately, seven big tech companies alone account for one-third of the US stock market's value, so the schadenfreude of watching the bubble burst would soon turn bitter – it is likely to cause an economic shock comparable to those of 2008 and 2020. This is the story of a remarkable new technology rolled out in the most reckless, self-serving way one could imagine, by the worst people, for the worst reasons. It's not the machines you should be angry with.
