{"product_id":"the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai-by-cory-doctorow-9781836745884","title":"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhether 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 \u003ci\u003ecentaur\u003c\/i\u003e is a person who chooses to use technology to help them do the things that matter to them. A \u003ci\u003ereverse centaur\u003c\/i\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003edoes\u003c\/i\u003e - we have to understand who it's doing it \u003ci\u003efor\u003c\/i\u003e and who it's doing it \u003ci\u003eto\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe 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 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAnything 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 \u003ci\u003eThe Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI\u003c\/i\u003e - as he so successfully did in \u003ci\u003eEnshittification\u003c\/i\u003e - 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Allen \u0026 Unwin Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47638505783532,"sku":"9781836745884","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781836745884-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.jpg?v=1779073193","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai-by-cory-doctorow-9781836745884","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}