Episode 11: Reverse Centaurs and AI, with Cory Doctorow

[upbeat music] Welcome back to Dreaming Against the Machine. I'm your host, Adam Becker. This week's guest is Cory Doctorow, and I'm very excited to have him on the show. Cory is a science fiction author, a nonfiction author, an essayist, blogger, commentator on the tech industry for decades. I've been following his writings since I was in college back when he was writing for the famous blog Boing Boing, and then read a few of his novels, and from there I was hooked. And over the last year, I have gotten the chance to meet him and be on a couple panels with him, and I knew that he would be a perfect person to have conversations with on this podcast about what a better future for the tech industry and for all of us might look like. So without, uh, any further chatter from me, here is Cory Doctorow. Cory, welcome to Dreaming Against the Machine.

Thanks, Adam. It's a pleasure to be on.

How do I even introduce you? You are a science fiction author and a activist for electronic rights and essayist, uh, nonfiction author, longtime blogger, and general internet person. Uh, at least that's how I think of you.

That suits me fine. Sure.

Yeah. [laughs]

Yeah, yeah. Why not?

Yeah.

A raconteur, gentleman adventurer-

[laughs]

... uh, possible war criminal. I don't know.

Yeah. Uh, blogs from a hot air balloon.

Right.

In a goggles and cape, and has been, what, associated with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for how long now?

I'm just about to start my twenty-fifth year.

Wow. Were you there when it started?

No, it's thirty-five years old.

Okay.

So I kinda grew up on it.

Mm-hmm.

Right? My, my mentor was a science fiction writer named Bruce Sterling.

Oh, yeah.

And Br- Bruce wrote a book about the founding of EFF called The Hacker Crackdown.

Hmm.

Basically, the year EFF got started, and I read that book and spent the next ten years following EFF's work and being really excited about it, and ten years later found myself working for them.

Yeah, no, Bruce Sterling, uh, he co-wrote that book with, uh, William Gibson, The Difference Engine, didn't he?

Yeah, The Difference Engine.

Yeah.

That's right. Bruce is my, my daughter's godfather.

Oh, wow, okay.

He's a Miracogirl fella.

Yeah. Well, I've been following your work for a very long time. I've, I was reading, uh, Boing Boing, uh-

Mm-hmm

... back in college, and I knew when I started this podcast that you were one of the people I wanted to bring on because if I'm trying to think about what a better future looks like, especially when I'm looking at the tech industry, uh, you're one of the people who has been thinking about that in public longer and more carefully than anybody else I can think of. And you have a new book that is coming out, uh, the day this episode of the podcast drops, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It's Too Late. Well, why don't we start with that? And I imagine the conversation will go many different places from there. So why don't we start with what a reverse centaur is?

It's, it's a commonplace in, uh, automation theory and in the history of automation that when workers drive automation, they tend to use automated tools to improve the quality of their outputs.

Mm-hm