Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"(locusmag.com)
locusmag.com
Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"
https://locusmag.com/2025/09/commentary-cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs/
38 comments
> Thatcher told us, “There is no alternative.” In 1982, Bill Gibson refuted her thus: “The street finds its own uses for things.”
> I know which prophet I’m gonna follow.
> Thanks to a free AI model that ran on my modest laptop, in the background while I was doing other work, I was able to write [an accurate quote]
He's right, but it sure sounds like a long fight made of small actions.
> Thanks to a free AI model that ran on my modest laptop, in the background while I was doing other work, I was able to write [an accurate quote]
He's right, but it sure sounds like a long fight made of small actions.
I really liked the definition of reverse-centaur
> A reverse-centaur is a machine that is assisted by a human being, who is expected to work at the machine’s pace.
This exactly describes the attitude of a PM I work with who makes abundant use of ChatGPT to generate PRDs.
We get so much crap for not keeping up with the flood of requirements. "Why don't you just plug my specs into Claude Code, review it, just tell Claude what needs to be fixed?" Its exhausting.
I really do feel like a reverse-centaur. I'm genuinely expected to work at the pace of this rube goldberg bullshit machine this PM has rigged up.
> A reverse-centaur is a machine that is assisted by a human being, who is expected to work at the machine’s pace.
This exactly describes the attitude of a PM I work with who makes abundant use of ChatGPT to generate PRDs.
We get so much crap for not keeping up with the flood of requirements. "Why don't you just plug my specs into Claude Code, review it, just tell Claude what needs to be fixed?" Its exhausting.
I really do feel like a reverse-centaur. I'm genuinely expected to work at the pace of this rube goldberg bullshit machine this PM has rigged up.
But is there really an alternative?
I love watching Star Trek. At its best, it both entertains and expands your mind. As Doctorow says, it explores the impact of technology on society and individuals, and it helps us see our current world in a different light.
But here's the thing: just as I would never try to learn physics from Star Trek, I would never take its ideas as prescriptions for how to run society. There's an episode in which Kirk almost triggers a nuclear war because he gambles that once faced with that possibility, the two sides will make peace instead. This is MAD theory on steroids.
Even the concept that there is no money in the Star Trek future is non-sensical. It is the economic equivalent of "Heisenberg compensators" or "inertial dampeners".
I feel the same way about Cory Doctorow. I enjoy reading him because he expands my mind. But I can't take him seriously.
Like Star Trek, Doctorow espouses simple themes in which there are good guys and bad guys. He envisions a utopia in which all his needs are met, and when the world falls short, he trots out the usual villains to blame, billionaires instead of Klingons. And he does it in an entertaining and clever way.
Reality is far more complicated, of course.
My father had a theory that the Industrial Revolution happened, not because of a technological change, but because the Bank of England invented fractional reserve banking. With fractional reserve lending, a bank can lend more money than it has on its books. And as long as that money is put to productive uses, the economy will grow faster than if the money supply were limited.
Instead of a central authority deciding what we should invest in, there is a distributed system that tries various things, some of which succeed and some of which fail. And with fractional reserve banking, there is more money for experiments, allowing for more shots-on-goal.
If I were to try to simplify things as Star Trek or Doctorow do, I might say that every material benefit that you have today, from electric lights to Uber, happened because someone decided to invest in an idea. In my morality tale, investors and founders are not "tech hucksters" but an essential cog in a complex, and almost miraculous machine that has made the world of 2025 almost unrecognizably better than the filthy, poor London of 1760.
I love watching Star Trek and reading Doctorow. But I find reality much more fascinating.
But here's the thing: just as I would never try to learn physics from Star Trek, I would never take its ideas as prescriptions for how to run society. There's an episode in which Kirk almost triggers a nuclear war because he gambles that once faced with that possibility, the two sides will make peace instead. This is MAD theory on steroids.
Even the concept that there is no money in the Star Trek future is non-sensical. It is the economic equivalent of "Heisenberg compensators" or "inertial dampeners".
I feel the same way about Cory Doctorow. I enjoy reading him because he expands my mind. But I can't take him seriously.
Like Star Trek, Doctorow espouses simple themes in which there are good guys and bad guys. He envisions a utopia in which all his needs are met, and when the world falls short, he trots out the usual villains to blame, billionaires instead of Klingons. And he does it in an entertaining and clever way.
Reality is far more complicated, of course.
My father had a theory that the Industrial Revolution happened, not because of a technological change, but because the Bank of England invented fractional reserve banking. With fractional reserve lending, a bank can lend more money than it has on its books. And as long as that money is put to productive uses, the economy will grow faster than if the money supply were limited.
Instead of a central authority deciding what we should invest in, there is a distributed system that tries various things, some of which succeed and some of which fail. And with fractional reserve banking, there is more money for experiments, allowing for more shots-on-goal.
If I were to try to simplify things as Star Trek or Doctorow do, I might say that every material benefit that you have today, from electric lights to Uber, happened because someone decided to invest in an idea. In my morality tale, investors and founders are not "tech hucksters" but an essential cog in a complex, and almost miraculous machine that has made the world of 2025 almost unrecognizably better than the filthy, poor London of 1760.
I love watching Star Trek and reading Doctorow. But I find reality much more fascinating.
I'm curious. Aside from this general criticism of Doctorow, do you have any specific criticisms of TFA's contents?
Any thoughts about whether reverse-centaurs are something that should continue to exist? Perhaps something about how the AI boom is going to produce miracles, as opposed to making us all babysitters forced to keep up with supersonic idiotic toddlers?
Any thoughts about whether reverse-centaurs are something that should continue to exist? Perhaps something about how the AI boom is going to produce miracles, as opposed to making us all babysitters forced to keep up with supersonic idiotic toddlers?
I don't think poverty and injustice should continue to exist. But I don't think that my writing that is going to magically eliminate either.
I think my (uncharitable) reading of TFA is:
1. Billionaires and tech hucksters want you to be a reverse-centaur. 2. Most people don't want to be reverse-centaurs. 3. Therefore, don't be a reverse-centaur, be a centaur instead.
As for what's going to happen with AI, I don't know. We're at point where we can no longer extrapolate the future from the past, and that's definitely scary.
But I'm an old Gen Xer, and I've lived through many of these scary moments. And I'm an optimist at heart, so I believe that, in the long arc of history, the future will be better than the past, even if I have to suffer now to make it so.
I think my (uncharitable) reading of TFA is:
1. Billionaires and tech hucksters want you to be a reverse-centaur. 2. Most people don't want to be reverse-centaurs. 3. Therefore, don't be a reverse-centaur, be a centaur instead.
As for what's going to happen with AI, I don't know. We're at point where we can no longer extrapolate the future from the past, and that's definitely scary.
But I'm an old Gen Xer, and I've lived through many of these scary moments. And I'm an optimist at heart, so I believe that, in the long arc of history, the future will be better than the past, even if I have to suffer now to make it so.
I think the problem comes in the situation where an individual doesn't get to choose not to be a reverse centaur. E.g. because that's the only way for them to keep their job.
That makes sense, but Doctorow fails to go any deeper than "I don't think reverse-centaurs should exist."
Why, for example, is the listicle author a reverse-centaur instead of a centaur like Doctorow? IMHO it's because of power-law rewards to good writing. Doctorow can make a living writing a few books because his books are popular. But the listicle writer can't charge that much per page so has to resort to increasing his page output with AI.
This is not the fault of AI!
My friend is an author, and she works very hard to write her books, at least as hard as, say, Steven King. You would not be surprised to hear that she does not make the same amount of money per hour worked as Steven King.
If Doctorow wants to get rid of reverse-centaurs, maybe he should face the actual problem instead of blaming the usual suspects.
Why, for example, is the listicle author a reverse-centaur instead of a centaur like Doctorow? IMHO it's because of power-law rewards to good writing. Doctorow can make a living writing a few books because his books are popular. But the listicle writer can't charge that much per page so has to resort to increasing his page output with AI.
This is not the fault of AI!
My friend is an author, and she works very hard to write her books, at least as hard as, say, Steven King. You would not be surprised to hear that she does not make the same amount of money per hour worked as Steven King.
If Doctorow wants to get rid of reverse-centaurs, maybe he should face the actual problem instead of blaming the usual suspects.
Like all problems, It’s possible there are many contributing factors. Power laws may be one. The usual suspects might carry some of the blame as well. These things are not mutually exclusive. It’s unlikely there is one “solution” that will fix the systemic issues that create reverse centaurs. I don’t see the value in writing someone off simply because they do not explore the entire solution space.
My original post fell short in that I criticized Doctorow without offering substance or examples. [Ironically, this is exactly what I accused him of!]
Later, in response to various people here, I wrote a more substantive critique, which I stand by. And I stand by my original opinion: Doctorow is a talented and entertaining writer, but I can't take him seriously.
Later, in response to various people here, I wrote a more substantive critique, which I stand by. And I stand by my original opinion: Doctorow is a talented and entertaining writer, but I can't take him seriously.
> Any thoughts about whether reverse-centaurs are something that should continue to exist?
I don't think he has really articulated a meaningful distinction between the two. It seems to be approximately "it's a centaur when you want to use AI for something and a reverse centaur when the boss wants you to use AI for something".
What he seems to want is that if AI can reduce the time it takes to do something, the time saved should be used to improve quality rather than to produce more output with fewer people. Which is nice and everything, but if you want that to happen what you need is not abstract indignation that corporations are willing to produce trash as long as people are willing to consume it, it's some efficient mechanism for people to discover high-quality things in a sea of low-quality trash.
I don't think he has really articulated a meaningful distinction between the two. It seems to be approximately "it's a centaur when you want to use AI for something and a reverse centaur when the boss wants you to use AI for something".
What he seems to want is that if AI can reduce the time it takes to do something, the time saved should be used to improve quality rather than to produce more output with fewer people. Which is nice and everything, but if you want that to happen what you need is not abstract indignation that corporations are willing to produce trash as long as people are willing to consume it, it's some efficient mechanism for people to discover high-quality things in a sea of low-quality trash.
Agreed. Doctorow doesn't believe reverse-centaurs should exist. That's a fine but very shallow position.
He's not saying reverse-centaurs should be banned, because he knows that's both untenable (how do you define "reverse-centaur") and counter-productive (reverse-centaurs will be out of a job, but VCs and billionaires will still exist).
At best he's complaining about a system that requires people to be reverse-centaurs instead of centaurs. But he doesn't examine the properties of the system that cause that. Why can't the listicle author be a centaur like Doctorow? Why are they paid so little that they need to use AI to produce entire articles instead of just a minor citation? Maybe it's because of the power-law rewards to talent, in which the few people, like Doctorow, who attract a wide readership, end up taking all the money.
In a "fair" system, maybe all authors should be paid the same flat rate. Then authors would work for the sheer joy of writing instead of to make more money. Of course, they might have to supplement their income in other ways, but at least it's fair, right? Right? I can't imagine Doctorow could disagree with that.
He's not saying reverse-centaurs should be banned, because he knows that's both untenable (how do you define "reverse-centaur") and counter-productive (reverse-centaurs will be out of a job, but VCs and billionaires will still exist).
At best he's complaining about a system that requires people to be reverse-centaurs instead of centaurs. But he doesn't examine the properties of the system that cause that. Why can't the listicle author be a centaur like Doctorow? Why are they paid so little that they need to use AI to produce entire articles instead of just a minor citation? Maybe it's because of the power-law rewards to talent, in which the few people, like Doctorow, who attract a wide readership, end up taking all the money.
In a "fair" system, maybe all authors should be paid the same flat rate. Then authors would work for the sheer joy of writing instead of to make more money. Of course, they might have to supplement their income in other ways, but at least it's fair, right? Right? I can't imagine Doctorow could disagree with that.
This comment reminds me of the one time when a critic said to Arnold how he wouldn’t want to look like him.
Arnold replied back, “don’t worry, you never will”.
Arnold replied back, “don’t worry, you never will”.
I love Arnold. And I readily agree that I will never be as smart or successful as Cory Doctorow. I'm comfortable just being me.
I'm sorry, but is producing 10 lists of 15 items each really 50 peoples' worth of work? The amount of effort this would take today without the use of a chatbot seems overblown. Or with the use of a chatbot, but fact-checked, for that matter.
edit: I'm not questioning how much work it was in the days of print. I think it's fairly false to paint it as if AI has much to do with the transition from high effort lists to low effort. I don't think it happened overnight that it went from 50 brains to 1, these lists have become easier to produce and far less valuable over the past few decades, I suspect the number of people involved had dwindled a lot before anyone used a chatbot to do it.
edit: I'm not questioning how much work it was in the days of print. I think it's fairly false to paint it as if AI has much to do with the transition from high effort lists to low effort. I don't think it happened overnight that it went from 50 brains to 1, these lists have become easier to produce and far less valuable over the past few decades, I suspect the number of people involved had dwindled a lot before anyone used a chatbot to do it.
How many books should a person read before being able to pick 15 to recommend, and how long do you think it should take to read them?
I agree with Doctorow about the de-humanizing nature of this sort of work - but to your specific point about fact checking, it'd honestly be fastest to outsource that to a different LLM, maybe ChatGPT in "deep research" mode or something like that.
"Here's a technology which is known to be confidently wrong pretty frequently. I'm going to use it to fact check things."
If you have tokens to burn, using new sessions to critique the work produced in other sessions greatly improves reliability. Asking the same question multiple different ways, and to more than one LLM, also helps a lot.
That approach may be a viable heuristic but it will only get you so far. It's like flagging an opinion because it doesn't rhyme with the opinions of others.
That's not what humans do when they are fact finding, though. It's not what a (proper) scientist would do if she/he discovered a great insight or theory and was wondering whether it was true.
That's not what humans do when they are fact finding, though. It's not what a (proper) scientist would do if she/he discovered a great insight or theory and was wondering whether it was true.
If you're turning to LLMs for great insight or theory, you're definitely doing it wrong. These tools are for well trod terrain, and when they're really just making shit up, it's almost always different shit each time. So yes, it's a heuristic, but for dealing with the stochastic weirdness these models sometimes spit out it works pretty damn well.
Querying an LLM for 'facts' is dangerous. Using some IR technique and incorporating LLMs to gauge relevancy and semantic alignment is a viable approach.
pay all the other 'ai's to crowdsource .. or maybe cloudsource, a truth boolean. Then when they all ingest each others answers slowly over time all the answers become the same, wether truthful or not.
It's a powerful tool that can be misused by the incompetent, like most other powerful tools.
The other thing is that the missing books can be created on demand and published in a couple of hours, using the same tech that mistakenly added them to the list in the first place.
They'll suck, of course, but so do most of the books on any given "Summer Reading Guide."
They'll suck, of course, but so do most of the books on any given "Summer Reading Guide."
So it's a sort of "reverse memory hole" where things that never existed contemporaneously to the list can now be given life to invalidate fact checking.
Which just reminds us that the committee who awarded the Nobel Prize to Kissinger and Arafat is the same one that overlooked Borges and Eco.
No. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, while the Literature prize and the other prizes defined by Nobel’s will are awarded by the Swedish Academy.
I see.
[deleted]
It was 3 people who were replaced for the making of a list.
The number 50 was what Doctorow presumed was the entirety of the department that could potentially have been replaced by AI, of which the making of this list had been only one of that department's overall tasks.
At 3 interns per article, having 30 interns working on 10 simultaneous articles at any given time seems like reasonable output for an online zine.
The number 50 was what Doctorow presumed was the entirety of the department that could potentially have been replaced by AI, of which the making of this list had been only one of that department's overall tasks.
At 3 interns per article, having 30 interns working on 10 simultaneous articles at any given time seems like reasonable output for an online zine.
In the days of print media, before you could google "top 10" X, the newspaper might well be your only source of "listicles." They took that responsibility seriously.
Top 10 lists are garbage nowadays because the format is used to flood search engines with Amazon Affiliate links for things like fartely brand leggings.
Top 10 lists are garbage nowadays because the format is used to flood search engines with Amazon Affiliate links for things like fartely brand leggings.
Right, which is why I asked if it's that much work _today_.
I don't think they went from this going through 50 brains to it going through 1 overnight because chatbots exist. They gradually got there as these lists both became easier to produce and less valuable.
I don't think they went from this going through 50 brains to it going through 1 overnight because chatbots exist. They gradually got there as these lists both became easier to produce and less valuable.
High-quality lists didn't become easier to produce; search engines were created and were unable to distinguish between high-quality lists and low-quality lists, which created a market for lemons.
That wouldn't have been their full time jobs but that list would have passed through quite a few people's hands; from gathering all the events/books/activities, picking out some that seem fun for several different 'types' of people, compiling, writing, reviewing/editing, fact checking and formatting.
I have a hard time taking extremists seriously, regardless what side they're on.
Work vs control technologies: tech like a typewriter we use to write or a chisel to carve, versus tech that orchestrates and narrows human behavior.
Prescriptive vs holistic technologies: tech that expects the worker to confirm to the specific intended use, versus tech that expands the workers agency & possibility, enables them to do new things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Technological_...
Lovely post from Cory. I particularly liked the part about
> But his job wasn’t even to supervise the chatbot adequately (single-handedly fact-checking 10 lists of 15 items is a long, labor-intensive process). Rather, it was to take the blame for the factual inaccuracies in those lists. He was, in the phrasing of Dan Davies, "an accountability sink" (or as Madeleine Clare Elish puts it, a "moral crumple zone").
Corporations are new immortal giants striding the lands, and how their vast godlike powers are used is an absolutely earth-quaking terror, often. The diffusion of responsibility they enable, and the seeming inability or unwillingness of both the law & society to assess, to reward & penalize these giants is a great imo tragedy. We barely see, with our ant-sized view of the world.