[Jodavaho.io] — Josh Vander Hook

In this excellent essay on reverse centaurs¹, Doctorow argues that people can either use AI as a tool (the centaurs) or be forced to let AI do the work and then you “supervise” it (reverse centaurs).

You should read it. It has this banger quote:

Direct link below²

I expect it is correct that some jobs, like the highlighted customer service bots, will be almost entirely reverse centaurs. A few humans will stand by to correct mistakes, or worse, be forced to check output before it is used. This is high suffering, high unemployment. It’s also what the C-suite drools over.

This is “company adoption” - favoring reverse centaurs

But some jobs, like the highlighted doctor-examining-ct-scans, might be assisted by AI. They make their judgement after optionally conferring with an AI to check for something like a second opinion. These are centaurs. This is low unemployment, low suffering. It also “feels” more like the doctor decides to use AI, vs being forced to by some pointy haired manager. It can still accelerate results and reduce overall costs if we become more efficient in the process.

This is “employee adoption” - the centaurs

The fear is, that AI companies will convince CEOs to adopt the reverse centaur model wholesale by dangling profit margins and stock prices. Maybe it helps, maybe not. The profit margins and stock prices that that will go up, however, are those belonging to the AI vendores themselves.

Claim AI companies can become wildly proftiable just enabling centaurs.

It is not inevitable that AI causes mass job loss, or that companies “must” embrace AI as an employee replacement. I wrote about this premise³. My claim is that if AI companies want to become as rich and famous as the biggest tech companies ever were, they actually do not need to push reverse centaurs. I believe anthropic knows this, judging by their “useful tools for people” vs “useful AI as employee” model so far. By all accounts, Anthropic is generating good revenue and providing good value.

For now, at least, the jobpocolypse may not be here. And it may not need to come. Most likely the AI sector will collapse around a few profitable tool makers and some well-known integrators soon enough, dragging down everyone’s 401k in the process.