Another example of a great thinker sounding great while missing the point entirely

December 7, 2025

This is another brilliantly written and highly misguided essay by Cory Doctorow. It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what AI actually is and where it's going. And provides the worst possible guidance as a result.

He refers to AI as "auto-complete", and thinks that any job replacement from AI will be reversed once the bubble pops and AI is revealed as incompetent.

all it does is calculate the most probable word to go next Cory Doctorow

This is very much like Krugman saying in the 90s that nobody will use the internet.

It's funny because I cheered many times during the read because he obviously cares about humans, which is my main concern as well. But this is why it's important to understand the fundamentals of what you're discussing beyond a surface level.

People arguing from emotion, and then influencing others, without understanding the reality on the ground cause a lot of harm. This essay will cause a lot of harm, as many others have, and many AI haters with large followings have as well.

And to be clear, I don't consider people who just talk about caution with AI to be haters. I tell people to be cautious about it as well. Anybody who is logical and cares about people is urging caution. With what you give to AI, with how you use it, with not becoming over-dependent on it, etc. I could fill a book with reasons to be cautious when using AI.

That's not what I'm talking about with AI hate. AI haters are those who have an underlying thread throughout their comments which is communicating one simple thing: "It's a scam. It will blow over. And there is no point in thinking deeply about it or how it will affect your life because soon it will be as important as NFTs or crypto. Or the .com bubble."

when crypto dies, what it will leave behind is bad Austrian economics and worse monkey JPEGs. Cory Doctorow

Basically, they are telling their followers, "Don't worry about it. You don't need to get ready. You do not need to learn this as some fundamental new skill." It really is like telling people in the 1980s and 90s: "Don't worry about computers, they will blow over." Except many times worse.

Everyone I know who has this position actually cares about people. So they're not being immoral by doing this. They are wrong about what AI is, what it's capable of, and where it's heading, and because of that, they're giving out advice that is harmful. It's as simple as that.

The Reverse Centaur ​

I will say that I loved Doctorow's "Reverse Centaur" analogy. I think it is phenomenal and I think it captures one of the main concerns I have about how AI will affect humans and their work. Or, more accurately, it's describing a mechanism through which that will happen.

The concept contrasts two arrangements:

• Centaur: A human head directing a machine body—you benefit from automation
• Reverse Centaur: A machine head on a human body—the machine directs you, extracting your labor

Amazon delivery people used to be people who drove a car. Then they'll become people who drive a mostly automated car. As it gets more advanced, there will be an automated car that uses people just a little bit. And then eventually it'll just be an automated car driven by a robot. No people required.

an Amazon delivery driver, who sits in a cabin surrounded by AI cameras, that monitor the driver's eyes and take points off if the driver looks in a proscribed direction Cory Doctorow

So basically three-quarters through this arc, you have AI that needs humans just a little bit. And I also loved his related point where the human gets blamed for mistakes and that's the little bit part where they're involved.

The radiologist's job isn't really to oversee the AI's work, it's to take the blame for the AI's mistakes. Cory Doctorow

Definitely a great point, and quite nasty.

The Real Problem ​

It's his conclusions, which again are based on his weak understanding of where AI is now, what it's capable of, and the path that it seems to be on, that's the problem.

He sees this pivot to AI and the firing of workers as this horrible mistake that's going to disrupt lives and cause untold problems in the labor force. And that when it finally corrects itself, when the AI bubble bursts, it will be very hard to hire the people back.

He imagines the aftermath will look like this:

We'll have a bunch of coders who are really good at applied statistics. We'll have a lot of cheap GPUs...And we'll have the open source models that run on commodity hardware Cory Doctorow

His argument is that corporations are making a bet on AI that will fail, and they're selling it to investors with pitches like:

you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year Cory Doctorow

That's not the problem. The problem is the jobs are going away permanently. Most jobs, especially after robots enter the picture. I really wish he would use his incredible intellect and creativity to focus on that reality instead of the fantasy that AI will just blow over as a scam.

The outcomes are completely different, and far more importantly, the advice to give people now is far different.

The Wrong Fight ​

We shouldn't be telling people to fight against the AI narrative and the AI hype and the corporations who are trying to use AI to get rid of jobs. It's fucking ridiculous.

What do you think a fucking corporation is? Its only purpose is to make money using as few resources as possible. Do you realize how many more people they would have to hire if they didn't use computers? There would be millions more jobs if computers didn't exist. The moment that they can accomplish their goals spending zero resources, that is exactly what a corporation is supposed to do.

This mistake of well-meaning people, like Doctorow, is adding morality to this. It is not the job of people who make things to hire others to help them. The hiring of other people to help them is a thing that happens when they have no choice. AI is now offering that choice. That is the way to look at this.

The question for us is not, "How can we stop this?" "How can we stop these corporate tycoons who are ruining everything?" That's unbelievably child-like thinking.

The Right Questions ​

Questions we should be asking are things like:

1. How can we get better at being human?
2. What should society look like when humans don't have to work?
3. What are the skills and capabilities that matter to us as individuals? How can we become stronger at them?
4. What does the economy look like when the classic Capital/Labor balance no longer exists because labor can now be done by capital?
5. What does a new economy look like that is human-based? Based on each person not being a corporate worker, but instead being a human individual offering insights, nurturing, perspective, judgment, art, and creativity?
6. What does it look like to exchange value using those things as currency instead of a fiat system given to us by capital that we then spend to buy things that we laborers create?

These are extremely hard questions that I can barely even start to think about. It's completely uncharted. Net new. Frightening and wonderful.

It would be nice to have people like Doctorow and Gary Marcus and others to help think about these questions instead of trying to fucking put their hand up and stop computers and the internet. You're wasting your breath and hurting people in the process. Please switch your attention to helping people get ready for a post-corporate-worker and post-labor reality.