Author, tech activist, and journalist Cory Doctorow released a new book titled "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI." Doctorow argues that the artificial intelligence industry is operating as a large financial bubble that requires immediate attention.

"The book is doing more than one thing," Doctorow said. "You're right that I'm describing the labor issue that falls out of the way that AI is being sold, but I think more foundationally is the material, financial basis for the AI bubble." He stated, "The AI bubble is the biggest tech bubble we've ever had."

Doctorow explained the connection between labor and finance, saying, "That's because the bubble's promoters are promising that they can replace labor, so you can't disentangle those two." He criticized current discourse, stating, "The left, by failing to talk about the material basis for bubbles, for growth narratives, and by falling back to this lazy, eternal 'growth is the ideology of a tumor' talk. has really miseducated people who are listening with half an ear." Consequently, "So a lot of people think bubbles are an ideological thing, instead of a material thing with reasons and motives that are totally rational — and that we can short-circuit," he said.

Doctorow outlined his objective: "By trying to make people better critics, both on these labor questions, but also these economic questions, I'm hoping that we can attack the bubble frontally and do something about it, instead of doing what we've done with creative labor fights for 40 years, which is finding another way to make creative workers feel angry at their audiences for consuming their work the wrong way while they get poorer." Regarding the timing of action, he noted, "You wrote that we need to pop it as soon as possible, because the longer we wait, the worse it gets." While he said, "It seems undeniable that AI is a bubble, and I think a lot of people are waiting for what happens when it pops," he also warned, "But it also seems like an 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' sort of situation." He added, "But it also seems like the burst threatens to squish us."

Doctorow coined the term "enshittification," which was also the title of his previous book. In automation theory, a centaur is defined as "a person who is assisted by a machine," while Doctorow proposes that a "reverse centaur" is essentially what happens when humans are ridden by tech. Recent polling from Pew Research indicates that 16% of Americans expect AI to have a positive societal impact, 40% foresee a negative impact, and 31% predict an equal mix of good and bad outcomes. 13% of Americans expressed uncertainty regarding AI's societal effects.