Cory Doctorow announces book arguing AI problems are about power at work

In short: Verso Books has announced a forthcoming Cory Doctorow book that argues the biggest risks from AI often come from how powerful organizations use it, not from “smart machines” themselves.

What happened

Cory Doctorow, a science-fiction author and long-time technology critic, has a new book on the way called The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. It is being published by Verso Books. Public listings describe it as a mix of criticism and practical guidance about how AI is used in everyday life and at work.

The book’s main metaphor is the “reverse centaur.” A “centaur” is a person using software as a tool to work better, like a chess player using a computer to check ideas. A “reverse centaur” is the opposite, a person being forced to work like an assistant to a machine, at the machine’s pace.

Verso’s description gives examples that include delivery drivers pushed to make nonstop drops, warehouse workers tracked so tightly that breaks become unrealistic, and programmers pressured to produce an unreasonable amount of code with AI tools.

Doctorow’s argument, as described publicly, is that debates about AI should not only ask what the technology can do. They should also ask who benefits from it and who gets harmed by it. In a recent talk linked to the same theme, he summed it up like this: “AI can’t do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that fails to do your job.”

Why it matters

For regular workers and customers, this frames AI as a workplace and policy issue, not just a gadget issue. The book points toward choices that governments, employers, and workers can make, so that AI becomes a normal tool, like spreadsheets, instead of a system that sets the speed, rules, and surveillance of people’s jobs.

Source: NYTimes