emily’s Reviews > The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI > Status Update

‘Does it—make coders more efficient? That doesn’t seem to be the case for junior coders whose “vibe coding” efforts—produce quick-and-dirty tools for one-off usage—w/o the hard-won experience of creatively solving a succession of programming challenges they may never develop the requisite depth of expertise—AI art—oft dismissed as 'soulless' but I think a better term is 'eerie' (Mark Fisher). It’s pretty disgusting.’

‘—you aren’t the audience for AI companies’ hype. The real audience is the finance sector. To the extent—you are targeted by AI msgs—in hopes of getting you to evince some kind of behaviour that makes investors think there’s something to this AI business. Tech workers—especially those early workers, were often people whose lives had been transformed for the better—& wanted to bring those benefits to the whole world—’

‘—it isn’t what the machine does—it’s who it does it for & who it does it to—all who fall for the hype is dreaming of—human needs fulfilled w/o having to extend moral consideration—AI girlfriend weirdos & bosses who—replace 1/2 their workers & terrorise remainders—workers who are frightened of starvation & do as they’re told. An AI girlfriend—demands nothing of you, except those things you tell it to demand of you.’

—the insistence that there is only one conceivable way to do things—problems you’re experiencing aren’t anyone’s fault, they’re just inescapable reality—high-tech Thatcherism—a bully who insists that they’re only doing what implacable reality demands of them. This is a book about what AI can and cannot do, but even more important—it’s about the possible social arrangements of AI—from not using—AI technology at all—’