Cory Doctorow2026After Enshittification
How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late
A tool can carry you, or you can end up carrying it. Before you ask what the AI does, ask who it is for and who it is done to.
The core idea
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, journalist and longtime digital-rights activist, and the writer who named enshittification. In this book he turns the same kind of analysis on the AI boom. He argues that the useful question about any technology is not only what it does, but who it is for and who it is done to. His central image is the centaur, a person helped by a machine, and its opposite, the reverse centaur: a person drafted in to serve a machine at the machine's pace, like the delivery driver with no time for breaks or the programmer asked to check more code than anyone could. He reads much of the AI hype as a story told to investors to keep big tech firms priced as growth companies, and warns that the money behind it looks like a bubble. He is not against AI itself, says it helps in some of his own work, and asks what useful tools should be left standing when the bubble goes.
The reverse centaur is not new. Doctorow reaches back to Lucy and Ethel on the speeding chocolate line in I Love Lucy: the belt sets the pace, and the people scramble to keep up. What AI adds is speed and scale, and a new place to put the person: in the loop, signing off on the machine's work faster than anyone could check it.
So he skips both the cheerleading and the doom. The same tool, he argues, can make one worker faster and freer and grind another one down. The difference is who controls it and who pays for its mistakes.
Pillar 1
A person with a machine as an assistant. Doctorow's own example is his car's lane-drift warning: it helps, and he is still the one driving.
Pillar 2
A person drafted in as the machine's assistant: the delivery driver watched and scored by apps, or the specialist kept on to sign off on a machine's output faster than anyone could check it.
Pillar 3
Hype aimed at investors keeps big tech priced as a growth story. Doctorow expects it to burst, and asks which useful tools we want left standing afterwards.
Interactive · the rider test
Pick one AI or automated tool you use at work. Six questions place it between centaur and reverse centaur, answer the book's two questions for it, and point to the first thing worth changing. Save each tool to your ledger to compare them.
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Your reading
Answer all 6 to see who is riding whom.
First move
No tools saved yet. Test one, then save it here to compare.
HourLife's test, built on the book's centaur and reverse-centaur idea. The questions and moves are ours, not the author's. It is not legal or employment advice. Your answers stay in this browser.
Concept anatomy
On the left, the two riders compared on the six points the test checks. On the right, the chain Doctorow traces from a stock-market story to a person at a screen, and on to what the bubble leaves behind.
HourLife's summary of the contrast.
| Point | Centaur | Reverse centaur |
|---|---|---|
| Pace | You set it | The tool sets it |
| Blame | The owner answers | You absorb it |
| Off switch | Yours to use | Not yours to stop |
| Gains | Time comes back to you | Time becomes quota |
| Watching | It watches the work | It watches you |
| Skill | Your skill grows | You only check |
The chain as Doctorow describes it, in five links.
Community insights
No. 01HourLife takeaway
Doctorow says he took this habit from science fiction, where the interesting part of a gadget is the society around it. A feature can be the same code in two workplaces and mean opposite things, depending on who controls it and who carries the cost. The two questions run through every chapter.
No. 02HourLife takeaway
In automation theory a centaur is a person with a machine as an assistant. Doctorow contrasts the lane-drift warning in his own car, which he can turn off, with an Amazon delivery driver juggling several apps and scored by software. Same kind of technology, but only one of them is in charge.
No. 03HourLife takeaway
Doctorow borrows the idea of an accountability sink from the writer Dan Davies. A person signs off on the machine's output at a speed no one could check properly, and when the machine misses something, the person is the one held responsible. His example is a radiologist reviewing scans an AI has already read.
No. 04HourLife takeaway
Markets pay more for a company they see as growing than for a mature one that is merely profitable. A big tech firm whose main markets are full needs a new growth story to keep that premium. Doctorow reads the AI boom, like the earlier metaverse push, as that story.
No. 05HourLife takeaway
The risk to workers is not only what the software can do. It is what managers are told it can do. Doctorow points to firms that swapped people for chatbots or automation and then had to deal with the results.
No. 06HourLife takeaway
The sums invested are so large that cheap help with small tasks cannot pay them back. So the pitch aims at high-wage jobs, such as radiologists and software developers. Doctorow argues that this is mostly a fantasy, but one that can still reshape those jobs for the worse.
No. 07HourLife takeaway
If a product is powerful enough to be dangerous, it must be powerful enough to be worth buying. Doctorow suggests that doom talk helps cast AI firms as the disruptors who will capture the future, which is what investors want to hear.
No. 08HourLife takeaway
Doctorow notes how few AI products make money and how much is being spent on data centres, and compares the moment to the dot-com bubble. When that bubble popped, people kept useful things it had paid for. The question he asks is what we want to be left with this time.
No. 09HourLife takeaway
Doctorow is neither an AI hater nor someone who thinks its takeover is inevitable. He describes uses that help, including in his own work. His case is that the same tool can lift a worker or grind one down, and that the difference comes from who decides how it is used.
Action steps
Write down every AI or automated tool you touch at work this week. For each one, note who chose it, who sets its pace, and whether you can switch it off.
Pick the tool you lean on most. Ask your manager in writing who is accountable when it gets something wrong, and what you should do when you disagree with it.
Ask what the tool logs about your work, who can see it and how long it is kept. Write the answer down with the date.
List the tasks where AI helps you think and the tasks you will keep doing yourself, with one line on why. Keep the page where you work.
Ask two colleagues how the same tool changed their pace and workload. Notes from three people are harder to wave away than one complaint.
Before you switch on a new AI feature, ask who it is for and who it is done to. If you cannot answer the second, wait a week.
Each Friday, note the tool's mistakes you caught and how long fixing them took. It shows the real cost, and it is a record if blame lands on you.
Once a week, do something the tool usually handles without it, so the skill stays yours.
When a big AI announcement goes by, ask who it was written for: users, bosses or investors. Decide that before you share it.
One line to keep
A good tool follows your lead. If you are the one keeping pace, ask who is riding whom.HourLife note after Cory Doctorow
Pick setup actions and daily habits from The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late, choose a start date, and download a printable checklist with real calendar pages.
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, journalist and longtime digital-rights activist, and the writer who named enshittification. In this book he turns the same kind of analysis on the AI boom. He argues that the useful question about any technology is not only what it does, but who it is for and who it is done to. His central image is the centaur, a person helped by a machine, and its opposite, the reverse...
HourLife’s key takeaways include: Ask who a technology is for and who it is done to, not only what it does. A centaur rides the machine. A reverse centaur is ridden by it. The human in the loop is often there to take the blame.
It's a strong pick for readers exploring Become Hard To Manipulate, Build a Career You're Proud Of, and Digital Literacy. HourLife distills its core idea into key insights and practical actions worth trying.
List the machines you work with — Write down every AI or automated tool you touch at work this week. For each one, note who chose it, who sets its pace, and whether you can switch it off.
About five minutes. The HourLife summary distills The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late into its core idea, 9 community insights, and 9 practical actions you can apply right away.
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