The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow

The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow

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.

We live in a jungle of new tools and new fables about them - and It's genuinely confusingUtopians battle it out with dystopians and the rest of us oscillate between awe and shock. We search for reliable guides who can tell us what's going on and where it might take us. Cory Doctorow is the most lucid and generous guide I know of, and this book - ostensibly about AI, but more broadly about the new world of hyper-capitalism and high tech - is stunning in its clarity and breadth of vision. In trying to keep some kind of grasp on what is going on in the world, I read Doctorow obsessively. -- Brian Eno

CORY DOCTOROW is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books. He writes nonfiction policy books such as The Internet Con and Chokepoint Capitalism, as well as science fiction for adults - Red Team Blues and The Lost Cause - and for young adults - Little Brother. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and has been honored with the Arthur C. Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Award and the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. He was made an honorary Doctor of Laws by York University and an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science by the Open University. For a quarter century, he has been an activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He co-founded the UK Open Rights Group and holds visiting appointments at the Open University, MIT, Cornell, and the University of North Carolina. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Burbank, California.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781836745525
ISBN 10	1836745524
Title	The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI
Author	Cory Doctorow
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Verso Books
Year published	2026-06-23
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.