An interesting interview with Cory Doctorow
Sci-fi author/tech journalist Cory Doctorow on his new book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.
The prolific Doctorow is back with a provocative new book that serves as a follow-up of sorts, focusing on AI and related issues: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI. [Available wherever books are sold. --Ed]
Doctorow doesn't actually enjoy talking about AI, but he's constantly being asked to comment on it. "I made the tactical error of being sick of talking about AI," Doctorow told Ars. "So I wrote a book about why I think it's a dumb thing to keep asking people to talk about, and now I have to talk about it." Reverse Centaur is Doctorow's attempt to "sort out the bullshit from the material reality."
In automation theory, per Doctorow, a "centaur" describes a human augmented with a technology, like machine learning, or even just driving a car or using autocomplete. A reverse centaur "is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine," Doctorow said in a speech last December. He gave the example of an Amazon delivery driver, surrounded by AI cameras monitoring their driving, who essentially serves as a peripheral to the delivery van.
[Source]: Ars Technica
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 03, @01:36AM (8 children)
What kind of centaur you are is a matter of perspective.
Need to travel 500 miles today, hop in your car and you're a centaur, right? The machine delivers you relatively effortlessly where you want to go.
But, if all you need is a paycheck, and the company is paying you to drive their vehicle 500 miles, you're now the reverse centaur - the meat appendage the machine is using to get where it needs (wants?) to be.
Same machine, same task, could be the same person driving the same route, but which is using the other can be hard to pin down.
Doctrow writes some occasionally fun stuff, sometimes.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday July 03, @09:19AM (7 children)
> But, if all you need is a paycheck, and the company is paying you to drive their vehicle 500 miles, you're now the reverse centaur
Yes and no. If you are an owner of the company, then you are still a centaur. If you are a manager in the company, then you are probably still a centaur. If your boss says "Hey Anne, we need someone to fix a server in Minneapolis, are you free this weekend", then maybe you are a centaur. If the boss says "Hey Bob, go fix the server in Minneapolis and screw your weekend. Here's an overtime check" Then it gets shady. If there is no overtime check, then the shade gets darker. What was the contract that Bob signed when he joined? Did he accept need for occasional shift work at short notice? Is his renumeration package suitable for that? Does it matter if Bob has low education level and can't get a better job, both practically and morally? Etc.
Does it matter what the technology in the car is to answer these questions?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 03, @12:02PM (5 children)
In my mind, the question is: did the person need to go to Minneapolis, or did the machine need to go to Minneapolis? Even when you're the owner of the company and you want that machine in Minneapolis because it makes you money by being there, the driver is serving the needs of the machine. I'm reverse centauring my car to the mechanic this morning to get the A/C serviced... yes, I want that to happen, but essentially I'm spending a chunk of my morning doing nothing but delivering the vehicle to have its needs serviced, and incidentally schedule another vehicle for me to deliver for an oil change next week.
It gets a little clearer in the case of Uber: the passengers are the centaurs, the driver is a reverse centaur. The machine clearly serves the needs of the passengers. The driver is there to serve the needs of the machine (which is serving the passengers...) One could argue that the driver is being served by the machine, so much easier than carrying the passengers piggyback, but I think that's a stretch. The passengers are paying for an air-conditioned coach to deliver them from A to B, only in rare cases do they have any value (or caring) for the humanity of the driver. The driver is required to drive the coach from Z to A to B to C where he gets the next fare - told where to go by his phone-app, almost manna style. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 [marshallbrain.com]
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by OrugTor on Friday July 03, @01:45PM (4 children)
The package needs to get to Minneapolis. The van is a van. The driver is a wage slave. Let's stick with the definition of reverse centaur, "is a machine head on a human body". There are no reverse centaurs yet. A centaur is a human who uses tools, so any human. We are now comparing a non-existent creature with any human.
If you think I am missing the point you are correct. The figurative reverse centaur appears to be a machine that controls a human. BUT a human doing what the machine tells it to do is helping the machine serve people, not serve the machine. There is no figurative reverse centaur. And we didn't even get into the consent argument.
BTW if the van requires the human to move it to A to B with monitoring why does it still uses humans that drive in a way that poses an existential threat to the van?
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 03, @02:05PM (1 child)
When the Amazon driver routing software is telling the driver where to turn minute by minute, what package to get off of which shelf, etc
Who or what is "doing the thinking"?
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by lars_stefan_axelsson on Saturday July 04, @07:06PM
Que "Manna – Two Views of Humanity’s Future" by the late Marshall Brain. https://marshallbrain.com/manna1 [marshallbrain.com] Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel) [wikipedia.org]
I must confess that I didn't think we'd see the technology to make this even remotely possible in my lifetime. But here we are...
Stefan Axelsson
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tesdune on Friday July 03, @02:37PM (1 child)
The example of the radiologist from an earlier story is a lot clearer.
5 Radiologists create 50 scan results without AI. They create the scans, clean it up and sign off taking responsibility for it's correctness.
Now with AI thy fire 4 radiologists, keep 1 around that needs to sign off on 100 scans. The human is just abused to sign off on 100 scans, which he can't properly check, just to take responsibility away from the AI.
That's what I think is the key idea behind the "reverse centaur".
Centaur: The human is using the machine to make his/her life easier or more productive. At the human's pace.
Reverse Centaur: The human is being used as a scapegoat, or to make the machine's life easier because it can't own copyright / take legal responsibility / jump out of itself to put the package in the mailbox 5 feet away. The machine dictates the pace.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 03, @05:18PM
Commercial planes could fly themselves, but the pilots are there to take responsibility and maybe, once in a hundred million flights, save the day Capt. Sully style - although it's arguable what the rates are of exceptional saves vs intentional or incompetent crashes... If (competent, which are well within our technical and economic grasp) automated systems were handling air traffic control and piloting, I suspect we'd have fewer mid-air collisions instead of more.
Ground travel is a lot more congested and "social" with all the non-automated ground vehicles running around - but a big part of the remaining role of driver is to take responsibility in cases requiring legal settlement.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday July 04, @07:38AM
You misspelled "erogenous". And that also explains why institutional investors spend so much time wanking around on the sharemarket.
(Score: 3, Informative) by liar on Friday July 03, @03:46PM (3 children)
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow :
https://pluralistic.net/ [pluralistic.net]
For anyone interested.
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 03, @06:32PM (2 children)
A quote from within a pluralistic link:
Then, plain and simple, you are not doing your job. If you're signing off on unsafe code, even if it's a functional part of a dysfunctional system, you are shirking your duty to yourself and humanity as a professional in your field, just as much as a social worker who turns a blind eye to abuse, a food inspector who lets dangerously contaminated foods be packaged, shipped or sold, an engineer who signs off on a bridge design they know to be unstable/unsafe, etc.
Software engineers lack professional engineer training. They don't have a PE license they put out there as an assurance that their sign-off means something. Maybe it's about time they started.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday July 04, @11:25AM (1 child)
There's quite a difference between a "Professional Engineer" and an "Employee Engineer".
The Professional Engineer is personally responsible, gets paid well, and is taken seriously - they can't "bargain" with the management/evaluators who "rank and yank" common wage-slave "workerbee" employees.
The '"Employee Engineer" has the onus of being an obedient employee ( placed in the "agentic" state - See "Stanley Milgram : Obedience to Authority") and has to exercise trade-offs whether to perform as instructed or find other employment. But neither do they take personal responsibility. The conundrum usually resolves when the engineer fails to deliver, usually because he knows that he doesn't know what he's doing and is now exceeding allocated time, or maybe he delivers poorly considered work on time, but it's not well thought out - all too often it's the customer that has to discover the result.
In a Union Shop, newbies are journeymen, while newly minted college graduate engineers ( or anyone else that doesn't "know the ropes") find themselves tasked with something beyond their knowledge, neither is there a sufficient charge number for them to consult with colleagues who are also held to time sheets. The result is the guy who was ignorant learns by experience instead of instruction, and management has to use the best of their people skills trying to explain all these stupid failures to the customer, while the fired employee brings what he learned by trial and error to his next employer.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 05, @01:52AM
And, yet, I am paid better than a PE as a Software Engineer employee, and I am also asked to sign off on pull requests, architectural designs and every other aspect of what makes software safe to use for its intended purposes.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Friday July 03, @08:33PM (2 children)
Language is his business and he's usually very good with it, but a "centaur" is a horse with a man's torso in old pictures, a chimera; two organisms combined. If you have someone else's kidney, heart, or other bodily organ transplanted, you are a chimera (pronounced "kaimerah").
If you are someone with technology transplanted, you are not a centaur, but a cyborg. A cyborg is someone with an implanted pacemaker, artificial joint, etc. Resistance is futile? No, you will NOT resist, you will beg to become a cyborg. I know, my eye's lenses are artificial and implanted and being a cyborg is far better than being blind or crippled.
There were no cyborgs until the first cataract surgery in 1959, and no chimeras until the first heart transplant in the 1960s.
As to cyborgs, it doesn't matter where the device is transplanted, whether on your head or in your chest. Doctorow was syntactically incorrect.
The Epstein Memorial Golden Presidential Ballroom: Let them eat cake.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Tuesday July 07, @06:47AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Geoff Clare on Tuesday July 07, @11:17AM