The title isn’t doing this incredible book from Cory Doctorow any favors, but once you know what a “reverse centaur” is, the whole thing clicks. In the author’s own words:
“A ‘centaur’ is a person who is assisted by a machine. You’re a human head being carried around on a tireless robot body. Driving a car makes you a centaur, and so does using autocomplete. And obviously, a reverse centaur is machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine.”
All in all this book is a sober, pragmatic take on the AI craze in tech. Doctorow (who is not a full-on AI hater) explains the incentives driving the rush to jam AI into everything, who profits from it, and who gets hosed in the process.
The key takeaway is that yes, this is a bubble and yes, it will pop. When it finally does, we might finally get to figure out what this technology is actually good for.
Buy the book
The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late
Cory Doctorow • 2026