Cory Doctorow on the Right – and Wrong – Way to Criticize AI
AI's popularity is declining as its industry provokes backlash with anti-human hiring ads, layoffs, chatbot replacement of customer service, and AI-generated slop. Author and activist Cory Doctorow discusses his new book, 'The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI,' addressing how to critique AI effectively and protect ourselves.
As artificial intelligence continues its inexorable march through human institutions, its popularity appears to be reaching an early nadir. So far, the sector’s behavior almost seems tailor-made to provoke a negative response. In San Francisco, billboards and bus stop ads exhort employers to STOP HIRING HUMANS. Workers across the country brace for layoffs blamed on AI, and AI companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars on environmentally destructive data centers. You can’t talk to a customer service rep anymore, only a chatbot that tells you lies. AI slop is filling up social media feeds, Spotify playlists, and even academic journals and newspapers.
What is to be done?
Author and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow sets out to answer this question in his new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. The author of more than twenty books, including the 2025 hit Enshittification, Doctorow is well known for his perceptive and irreverent writing on Big Tech. Jacobin spoke with Doctorow about what’s driving the AI craze, how to be a good AI critic, and what we can do to protect ourselves in the age of AI.