{"id":23642,"date":"2026-06-24T09:37:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T07:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/you-cant-make-billions-without-hurting-people-cory-doctorow-on-elon-musk-the-ai-bubble-and-bosses-cruel-fantasies\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T09:37:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T07:37:14","slug":"you-cant-make-billions-without-hurting-people-cory-doctorow-on-elon-musk-the-ai-bubble-and-bosses-cruel-fantasies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/24\/you-cant-make-billions-without-hurting-people-cory-doctorow-on-elon-musk-the-ai-bubble-and-bosses-cruel-fantasies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You can\u2019t make billions without hurting people\u2019: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses\u2019 cruel fantasies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The writer who coined the word \u2018enshittification\u2019 tells us why AI will never deliver what it promises \u2013 and why it still appeals so much to those in power<\/p>\n

A \u201ccentaur\u201d, in automation theory, is a person assisted by a machine, and a \u201creverse centaur\u201d, hero of Cory Doctorow\u2019s new book, The Reverse Centaur\u2019s Guide to Life After AI<\/a>, is a \u201chuman who is conscripted into acting as an assistant to <\/em>a machine\u201d. Every warehouse worker who ever had to urinate in a water bottle because they couldn\u2019t otherwise meet the fulfilment targets set by an algorithm is a reverse centaur. Reaching into the future, everyone who has to sit in a self-driving truck to make sure it doesn\u2019t crash, presumably on minimum rather than truck-driver wages, is a reverse centaur; as is every lawyer no longer on lawyer\u2019s money checking Gemini\u2019s command of precedent, every indie band scraping a living doing covers of AI-generated hits, and so on. That, anyway, is the promise: AI is coming for your job, and it is coming for your kids\u2019 jobs, and there is no point fighting it because the future\u2019s already here.<\/p>\n

Wiping out the world of work, and with it our ability to sustain ourselves and live autonomous lives, is only the beginning, if you listen to AI\u2019s architects. Elon Musk has called it the single greatest threat to human civilisation<\/a>, Sam Altman has said it will \u201cmost likely lead to the end of the world\u201d and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic<\/a>, memorably forecast that AI would come to see us the way we see animals<\/a>: cute to have around but ultimately a resource to be exploited. \u201cAI people claim they\u2019re about to create God, by teaching words to a word-guessing programme,\u201d Doctorow says. \u201cIt\u2019s grandiose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nThe writer who coined the word \u2018enshittification\u2019 tells us why AI will never deliver what it promises \u2013 and why it still appeals so much to those in power
\nA \u201ccentaur\u201d, in automation theory, is a person assisted by a machine, and a \u201creverse centaur\u201d, hero of Cory Doctorow\u2019s new book, The Reverse Centaur\u2019s Guide to Life After AI, is a \u201chuman who is conscripted into acting as an assistant to a machine\u201d. Every warehouse worker who ever had to urinate in a water bottle because they couldn\u2019t otherwise meet the fulfilment targets set by an algorithm is a reverse centaur. Reaching into the future, everyone who has to sit in a self-driving truck to make sure it doesn\u2019t crash, presumably on minimum rather than truck-driver wages, is a reverse centaur; as is every lawyer no longer on lawyer\u2019s money checking Gemini\u2019s command of precedent, every indie band scraping a living doing covers of AI-generated hits, and so on. That, anyway, is the promise: AI is coming for your job, and it is coming for your kids\u2019 jobs, and there is no point fighting it because the future\u2019s already here.
\nWiping out the world of work, and with it our ability to sustain ourselves and live autonomous lives, is only the beginning, if you listen to AI\u2019s architects. Elon Musk has called it the single greatest threat to human civilisation, Sam Altman has said it will \u201cmost likely lead to the end of the world\u201d and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, memorably forecast that AI would come to see us the way we see animals: cute to have around but ultimately a resource to be exploited. \u201cAI people claim they\u2019re about to create God, by teaching words to a word-guessing programme,\u201d Doctorow says. \u201cIt\u2019s grandiose.\u201d Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The writer who coined the word \u2018enshittification\u2019 tells us why AI will never deliver what it promises \u2013 and why it still appeals so much to those in power A \u201ccentaur\u201d, in automation theory, is a person assisted by a machine, and a \u201creverse centaur\u201d, hero of Cory Doctorow\u2019s new book, The Reverse Centaur\u2019s Guide …<\/p>\n

\u2018You can\u2019t make billions without hurting people\u2019: Cory Doctorow on Elon Musk, the AI bubble and bosses\u2019 cruel fantasies<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":23643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23642"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}