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The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence―Before It's Too Late
Not yet published
Expected 23 Jun 26Whether you want to criticise, kill, or use AI, you have to get through the hype and uncover the real story. Start with labour: in automation theory, a centaur is a person who chooses to use technology to help them do the things that matter to them. A reverse centaur is a person who has been conscripted to serve as a helper for a machine, at an inhuman, machine pace: a driver made to deliver all day long, nonstop; a warehouse worker made to work without food or bathroom breaks; a programmer made to crank out impossible amounts of code. As Doctorow says: it's not enough to ask what the technology does - we have to understand who it's doing it for and who it's doing it to.
The intended audience for AI hype isn't the people who are forced to use AI. The AI show is a performance staged for bosses and investors. . Investment bankers claim AI will to be worth more than $16 trillion: a number that only makes sense if AI replaces vast swathes of the wage-earning human workforce. To justify that level of "value," every story about AI must be presented as inevitable, world-changing disruption. Even the tales of the robot apocalypse are a calculated attempt to bolster the fearsome power of AI.
Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. When the AI bubble bursts, what will we salvage? Is there something in the wreckage that everyday people will find useful? In The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI - as he so successfully did in Enshittification - Doctorow recounts both how we found ourselves in this dire situation and how we can get through it, to a life "after" AI in which the tools work for us, not the other way around.
The intended audience for AI hype isn't the people who are forced to use AI. The AI show is a performance staged for bosses and investors. . Investment bankers claim AI will to be worth more than $16 trillion: a number that only makes sense if AI replaces vast swathes of the wage-earning human workforce. To justify that level of "value," every story about AI must be presented as inevitable, world-changing disruption. Even the tales of the robot apocalypse are a calculated attempt to bolster the fearsome power of AI.
Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. When the AI bubble bursts, what will we salvage? Is there something in the wreckage that everyday people will find useful? In The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI - as he so successfully did in Enshittification - Doctorow recounts both how we found ourselves in this dire situation and how we can get through it, to a life "after" AI in which the tools work for us, not the other way around.
240 pages, Paperback
Expected publication June 23, 2026
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About the author
Cory Doctorow
266 books6,480 followersCory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and
Little Brother
and novels for adults like
Rapture Of The Nerds
and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
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May 11, 2026This was phenomenal. It took complicated economic, technological, philosophical, and labour dimensions of AI and presented it in a way that was easy to understand, boiled down to the thesis that AI isn't made for us as users, but to investors for capital. I listened to the audiobook and the passion in Cory Doctorow's voice is infectious. While this is an infuriating topic, I also found myself laughing out loud as Doctorow highlights the absurdity of the AI hype we're living through. I couldn't recommend this more.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I have been telling everyone all about my plans for a solarpunk summer. (In case you haven't heard yet, get ready for Solarpunk Summer '26! Now that you know, you will start to see it everywhere.) Cory Doctorow's latest is exactly the book to kick it off. The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI explains the AI bubble, coming collapse, what we can do about it, and what we should use from it. Solarpunk is about using technology in sustainable ways for collective flourishing. Doctorow's description of how to use AI appropriately explains the concept in detail with concrete examples. This book explores the financial, social, and ethical quandaries we find ourselves collectively wading through as we navigate the AI minefield and gives suggestions for paths forward. I truly appreciate the author's approach - AI is not the problem, the way we choose to use it and leverage it is. The financial house of cards will collapse and when it does, there are bits and bobs to save. This is the book I will be thrusting into people's hands when I talk about the stock market and alternative investments. (Which I do much too often because as much as I promise myself I will stop giving unsolicited advice, I can't seem to help it.) This isn't a doom & gloom book. It is a book about what to do while and after things go boom. Thank you to Cory Doctorow, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the audioARC.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
After last year's Enshittification (about the shittiness big companies inflict on us when in a regulatory vacuum), Doctorow narrows the focus on AI. I particularly appreciate this because as a librarian, all I hear all day every day is AI - from hysteria to raptures. Myself, I'm a conscientious objector, although I very much do not want to be a closed-minded Luddite.
Enter this book, which lays out a bunch of reasons why AI itself is not the enemy - it's the financial (and, again) regulatory environment that AI exists in that makes it such an existential topic. The whole narrative around AI coming to steal your jobs and replace you and leave you as part of the permanent underclass - turns out (according to the author, and I don't know enough to doubt him) to be driven by the companies themselves, whose only real motivation for doing ANYTHING is to maintain their status as growth (rather than mature) companies, and thus have easy access to investor capital and printing infinite stock shares. They want us all to believe that their technology is so advanced that its market disruption is inevitable. If Wall Street decided that they were plateauing, their shares would tank and the investors/c-suite would lost all of their accumulated wealth, so the illusion of continued growth is essential.
The title flips the tech term, centaur. A centaur is someone who augments their work with technology, by choice. A reverse-centaur is someone on whom technology is imposed for someone else's bottom line: they are working for the tech, not the tech working for them. The important thing to keep in mind re AI is not what the tech can do (CD is skeptical that it's actually going to replace humans at most tasks) who it is doing it for and to whom it is doing it. He is not an anti-technologist; he is closer to an anti-capitalist and pro-regulator, and above all, doesn't want five mega companies bringing down the entire financial system because they can't function without the illusion of endless growth.
Tldr; billionaires bad, creatives and technology good, our political system should be functioning to use the latter to benefit the most people, not the few. It's concise and convincing - and a good framing to put to anyone who accuses you of being a Luddite if you're AI-skeptical at all.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!
Enter this book, which lays out a bunch of reasons why AI itself is not the enemy - it's the financial (and, again) regulatory environment that AI exists in that makes it such an existential topic. The whole narrative around AI coming to steal your jobs and replace you and leave you as part of the permanent underclass - turns out (according to the author, and I don't know enough to doubt him) to be driven by the companies themselves, whose only real motivation for doing ANYTHING is to maintain their status as growth (rather than mature) companies, and thus have easy access to investor capital and printing infinite stock shares. They want us all to believe that their technology is so advanced that its market disruption is inevitable. If Wall Street decided that they were plateauing, their shares would tank and the investors/c-suite would lost all of their accumulated wealth, so the illusion of continued growth is essential.
The title flips the tech term, centaur. A centaur is someone who augments their work with technology, by choice. A reverse-centaur is someone on whom technology is imposed for someone else's bottom line: they are working for the tech, not the tech working for them. The important thing to keep in mind re AI is not what the tech can do (CD is skeptical that it's actually going to replace humans at most tasks) who it is doing it for and to whom it is doing it. He is not an anti-technologist; he is closer to an anti-capitalist and pro-regulator, and above all, doesn't want five mega companies bringing down the entire financial system because they can't function without the illusion of endless growth.
Tldr; billionaires bad, creatives and technology good, our political system should be functioning to use the latter to benefit the most people, not the few. It's concise and convincing - and a good framing to put to anyone who accuses you of being a Luddite if you're AI-skeptical at all.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Cory Doctorow writes with his accustomed wit and humor as he gleefully pulls back the curtain on the Ozian AI hype wave, revealing that that behind all the façade of world changing technological wizardry, there’s really just mundane corporate greed. It’s no different from other bubbles before it, cynical and savvy promoters making a mountain out of a fairly small (for now) technological mole hill to extract profit.
Reading this is akin to having a persistent pain in your foot and finally removing a hidden pebble in your shoe. It’s full of “Ah ha. THAT’S why!” moments. The experience is roughly half receiving what feels like forbidden knowledge and half the relief of finally understanding the reasons behind something deeply annoying and perplexing.
Why auto play videos are now ubiquitous on every platform. Why so much discourse around AI is overblown and intentionally divisive (because that’s what drives engagement and hence perks the interest of investors), why buttons that used to actually do something useful on your phone now prompt a horrendous, useless AI gremlin to cover your screen. These and several other phenomena are explained in Doctorow’s signature scathing style. For all his (well founded) criticism, this book is not a rant. There is nuance and clear eyed analysis here.
As always Doctorow displays his flair for synthesizing complex systems into something comprehensible and entertaining you into the bargain. Proving again, if proof were needed, that he’s one of the most interesting, relevant writers today.
Reading this is akin to having a persistent pain in your foot and finally removing a hidden pebble in your shoe. It’s full of “Ah ha. THAT’S why!” moments. The experience is roughly half receiving what feels like forbidden knowledge and half the relief of finally understanding the reasons behind something deeply annoying and perplexing.
Why auto play videos are now ubiquitous on every platform. Why so much discourse around AI is overblown and intentionally divisive (because that’s what drives engagement and hence perks the interest of investors), why buttons that used to actually do something useful on your phone now prompt a horrendous, useless AI gremlin to cover your screen. These and several other phenomena are explained in Doctorow’s signature scathing style. For all his (well founded) criticism, this book is not a rant. There is nuance and clear eyed analysis here.
As always Doctorow displays his flair for synthesizing complex systems into something comprehensible and entertaining you into the bargain. Proving again, if proof were needed, that he’s one of the most interesting, relevant writers today.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Author Doctorow states his premise early in the book - Artificial Intelligence is a vehicle to maintain tech companies' status as "growth companies," so the technology is hyped, over-promising, under-delivering, and maybe a complete and utter fraud.
In support of that premise, Doctorow cites any number of examples of AI platforms and apps and services that are just hyped enough to persuade employers to lay off humans in exchange for adopting technology that fails to do its job as well as the fired humans.
It's all pretty convincing, and definitely entertaining. However, Doctorow then cites any number of examples of individual uses of AI that DO benefit individuals. The problem, according to Doctorow, is not so much, it seems, that AI doesn't exist; it's that its value all depends on whose hands are on the wheel. There's a contradiction between both parts of Doctorow's argument that he doesn't really come to terms with.
I don't think you have to dismiss Doctorow's thoughts to conclude that it's not all that simple. AI can be incredibly useful, while also posing a threat. My own sense - admittedly, less educated and less knowledgeable than Doctorow's - is that AI is real, and its value to humanity will depend on what we teach the AI systems to learn.
All of which is to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Doctorow's take, even if I didn't buy everything he was offering.
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux and NetGalley for the advance reviewer's copy.
In support of that premise, Doctorow cites any number of examples of AI platforms and apps and services that are just hyped enough to persuade employers to lay off humans in exchange for adopting technology that fails to do its job as well as the fired humans.
It's all pretty convincing, and definitely entertaining. However, Doctorow then cites any number of examples of individual uses of AI that DO benefit individuals. The problem, according to Doctorow, is not so much, it seems, that AI doesn't exist; it's that its value all depends on whose hands are on the wheel. There's a contradiction between both parts of Doctorow's argument that he doesn't really come to terms with.
I don't think you have to dismiss Doctorow's thoughts to conclude that it's not all that simple. AI can be incredibly useful, while also posing a threat. My own sense - admittedly, less educated and less knowledgeable than Doctorow's - is that AI is real, and its value to humanity will depend on what we teach the AI systems to learn.
All of which is to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Doctorow's take, even if I didn't buy everything he was offering.
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux and NetGalley for the advance reviewer's copy.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Hard to describe this as anything other than an absolute slam dunk by Cory Doctorow. Nonfiction from science fiction authors always hits different -- I'm rapidly learning nonfiction from anticapitalist leftist science fiction authors is in a whole other class. Doctrow's treatise on AI is cleverly named for the machine learning concept of the reverse centaur --an extended metaphor used here to describe the subordination of large groups of people to an energy-and-money sucking machine that serves little (if any) benefit to society.
If you, like me, have experienced the vague sentiment that all this AI stuff seems too good to be true and its potential benefits have already been overshadowed by the twin evils of capitalism of a facist surveillance state - this book is for you! If you haven't had these thoughts, but just generally want to get a picture of the AI landscape not biased by people who want your money or have poured all of THEIR money into making AI succeed - this book is also for you! I've noticed that a lot of AI-critical writers fall prey to fear-mongering and/or sweeping generalizations that limit the impact of their (often valid) core points. Doctrow dodges these pitfalls and strikes a balance of dry humor, frank words of warning, and ultimately cautious optimism that left me feeling both angry and energized. Catch me assigning sections of this to my undergraduates next semester after it hits the bookshelves later this summer.
If you, like me, have experienced the vague sentiment that all this AI stuff seems too good to be true and its potential benefits have already been overshadowed by the twin evils of capitalism of a facist surveillance state - this book is for you! If you haven't had these thoughts, but just generally want to get a picture of the AI landscape not biased by people who want your money or have poured all of THEIR money into making AI succeed - this book is also for you! I've noticed that a lot of AI-critical writers fall prey to fear-mongering and/or sweeping generalizations that limit the impact of their (often valid) core points. Doctrow dodges these pitfalls and strikes a balance of dry humor, frank words of warning, and ultimately cautious optimism that left me feeling both angry and energized. Catch me assigning sections of this to my undergraduates next semester after it hits the bookshelves later this summer.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
In this upcoming release, Doctorow does what he does best: he takes a tired tech metaphor and flips it on its head. While the traditional "AI Centaur" promised a future where humans provide the strategy and AI provides the horsepower, Doctorow warns of the Reverse Centaur. This is the grim reality where the algorithm makes the decisions and the human becomes a mere biological appendage tasked with carrying out the physical labor.
It is a natural evolution of his "Enshittification" thesis, and his prose is as sharp and high signal as ever. He has a gift for connecting the dots between labor rights, code, and corporate overreach in a way that feels both urgent and inevitable.
However, one has to account for the classic Doctorow bias. He is so deeply invested in his anti-monopoly narrative that he often ignores the nuanced, positive applications of these technologies. For him, AI is almost exclusively a tool for surveillance and exploitation. It is a brilliant, necessary read, but don't expect a balanced view of the tech itself. He is a man on a mission, and that mission occasionally blinds him to the utility of the tools he critiques.
It is a natural evolution of his "Enshittification" thesis, and his prose is as sharp and high signal as ever. He has a gift for connecting the dots between labor rights, code, and corporate overreach in a way that feels both urgent and inevitable.
However, one has to account for the classic Doctorow bias. He is so deeply invested in his anti-monopoly narrative that he often ignores the nuanced, positive applications of these technologies. For him, AI is almost exclusively a tool for surveillance and exploitation. It is a brilliant, necessary read, but don't expect a balanced view of the tech itself. He is a man on a mission, and that mission occasionally blinds him to the utility of the tools he critiques.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
5 stars
I cannot get enough of Cory Doctorow's writing, and especially these recent perspectives on AI. Also, let's be real. This cover is irresistible. It truly marks a case in which this book CAN be judged by its cover. Both great and wild.
Anyone familiar with Doctorow's work will know to look forward to his audio narration (if that modality is accessible and in your general vibe). I can't imagine accessing this content in any other way. Doctorow's enthusiasm and pacing bring so much in terms of tone and - for a subject that can get dark - humor. Love it.
I'm constantly fascinated by people's opinions and uses of AI right now, in part because of the layered impact it has in so many parts of my work and life. I learned a lot here, and I was already recommending this to various folks after just the first few minutes of listening. I think many audiences will benefit from this listen AND find it palatable in most cases.
I love horror, and this is...right there in a different way. Another winner from Doctorow!
*Special thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this alc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I cannot get enough of Cory Doctorow's writing, and especially these recent perspectives on AI. Also, let's be real. This cover is irresistible. It truly marks a case in which this book CAN be judged by its cover. Both great and wild.
Anyone familiar with Doctorow's work will know to look forward to his audio narration (if that modality is accessible and in your general vibe). I can't imagine accessing this content in any other way. Doctorow's enthusiasm and pacing bring so much in terms of tone and - for a subject that can get dark - humor. Love it.
I'm constantly fascinated by people's opinions and uses of AI right now, in part because of the layered impact it has in so many parts of my work and life. I learned a lot here, and I was already recommending this to various folks after just the first few minutes of listening. I think many audiences will benefit from this listen AND find it palatable in most cases.
I love horror, and this is...right there in a different way. Another winner from Doctorow!
*Special thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this alc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Review of advance copy
This was a really engaging, well researched book. It was clear from the narration that he was passionate about the subject. It had a lot of information over all different aspects of AI and its function as an industry.
I think I would disagree on some of the positive ways he suggested as uses for AI. But part of that stems from me just being so anti AI at this point.
This flowed really well from subject to subject. Overall a great, quick read.
I think I would disagree on some of the positive ways he suggested as uses for AI. But part of that stems from me just being so anti AI at this point.
This flowed really well from subject to subject. Overall a great, quick read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
An interesting and engaging read. Works well as a sequel to the author's previous book, Enshittification (there's a little bit of cross-over, and some of the same bad actors make appearances), but it is focused on AI and its impact. At times, didn't feel as focused, but plenty of material that is thought-provoking and worth reading.
Recommended.
Recommended.
Review of advance copy
Thank you to Libro.fm for an advanced copy of this audiobook.
April 16, 2026
A thorough, deeply fucking sick of it all guide about the impending burst of the AI bubble and what AI can and can't actually do as of publishing. Happily, since publishing, Sora has imploded, which is a very good sign. Either way, man, if your work fucking makes you interact with AI this is a good guide to know how realistic and or desperate their claims are.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews