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Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

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Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#31

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cptroot wrote: post #24
GMoromisato wrote: post #21

I love watching Star Trek. At its best, it both entertains and expands your mind. As Doctorow says, it explores the impact of technology on society and individuals, and it helps us see our current world in a different light. But here's the thing: just as I would never try to learn physics from Star Trek, I would never take its ideas as prescriptions for how to run society. There's an episode in which Kirk almost trig…

I'm curious. Aside from this general criticism of Doctorow, do you have any specific criticisms of TFA's contents? Any thoughts about whether reverse-centaurs are something that should continue to exist? Perhaps something about how the AI boom is going to produce miracles, as opposed to making us all babysitters forced to keep up with supersonic idiotic toddlers?

> Any thoughts about whether reverse-centaurs are something that should continue to exist?

I don't think he has really articulated a meaningful distinction between the two. It seems to be approximately "it's a centaur when you want to use AI for something and a reverse centaur when the boss wants you to use AI for something".

What he seems to want is that if AI can reduce the time it takes to do something, the time saved should be used to improve quality rather than to produce more output with fewer people. Which is nice and everything, but if you want that to happen what you need is not abstract indignation that corporations are willing to produce trash as long as people are willing to consume it, it's some efficient mechanism for people to discover high-quality things in a sea of low-quality trash.

Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#32

Post by lupusreal »

pipo234 wrote: post #26
lupusreal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have tokens to burn, using new sessions to critique the work produced in other sessions greatly improves reliability. Asking the same question multiple different ways, and to more than one LLM, also helps a lot.

That approach may be a viable heuristic but it will only get you so far. It's like flagging an opinion because it doesn't rhyme with the opinions of others. That's not what humans do when they are fact finding, though. It's not what a (proper) scientist would do if she/he discovered a great insight or theory and was wondering whether it was true.

If you're turning to LLMs for great insight or theory, you're definitely doing it wrong. These tools are for well trod terrain, and when they're really just making shit up, it's almost always different shit each time. So yes, it's a heuristic, but for dealing with the stochastic weirdness these models sometimes spit out it works pretty damn well.

Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#33

Post by harimau777 »

GMoromisato wrote: post #28
cptroot wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. Aside from this general criticism of Doctorow, do you have any specific criticisms of TFA's contents? Any thoughts about whether reverse-centaurs are something that should continue to exist? Perhaps something about how the AI boom is going to produce miracles, as opposed to making us all babysitters forced to keep up with supersonic idiotic toddlers?

I don't think poverty and injustice should continue to exist. But I don't think that my writing that is going to magically eliminate either. I think my (uncharitable) reading of TFA is: 1. Billionaires and tech hucksters want you to be a reverse-centaur. 2. Most people don't want to be reverse-centaurs. 3. Therefore, don't be a reverse-centaur, be a centaur instead. As for what's going to happen with AI, I don't know…

I think the problem comes in the situation where an individual doesn't get to choose not to be a reverse centaur. E.g. because that's the only way for them to keep their job.

Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#34

Post by GMoromisato »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #31
cptroot wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. Aside from this general criticism of Doctorow, do you have any specific criticisms of TFA's contents? Any thoughts about whether reverse-centaurs are something that should continue to exist? Perhaps something about how the AI boom is going to produce miracles, as opposed to making us all babysitters forced to keep up with supersonic idiotic toddlers?

> Any thoughts about whether reverse-centaurs are something that should continue to exist? I don't think he has really articulated a meaningful distinction between the two. It seems to be approximately "it's a centaur when you want to use AI for something and a reverse centaur when the boss wants you to use AI for something". What he seems to want is that if AI can reduce the time it takes to do something, the time s…

Agreed. Doctorow doesn't believe reverse-centaurs should exist. That's a fine but very shallow position.

He's not saying reverse-centaurs should be banned, because he knows that's both untenable (how do you define "reverse-centaur") and counter-productive (reverse-centaurs will be out of a job, but VCs and billionaires will still exist).

At best he's complaining about a system that requires people to be reverse-centaurs instead of centaurs. But he doesn't examine the properties of the system that cause that. Why can't the listicle author be a centaur like Doctorow? Why are they paid so little that they need to use AI to produce entire articles instead of just a minor citation? Maybe it's because of the power-law rewards to talent, in which the few people, like Doctorow, who attract a wide readership, end up taking all the money.

In a "fair" system, maybe all authors should be paid the same flat rate. Then authors would work for the sheer joy of writing instead of to make more money. Of course, they might have to supplement their income in other ways, but at least it's fair, right? Right? I can't imagine Doctorow could disagree with that.

Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#35

Post by GMoromisato »

harimau777 wrote: post #33
GMoromisato wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think poverty and injustice should continue to exist. But I don't think that my writing that is going to magically eliminate either. I think my (uncharitable) reading of TFA is: 1. Billionaires and tech hucksters want you to be a reverse-centaur. 2. Most people don't want to be reverse-centaurs. 3. Therefore, don't be a reverse-centaur, be a centaur instead. As for what's going to happen with AI, I don't know…

I think the problem comes in the situation where an individual doesn't get to choose not to be a reverse centaur. E.g. because that's the only way for them to keep their job.

That makes sense, but Doctorow fails to go any deeper than "I don't think reverse-centaurs should exist."

Why, for example, is the listicle author a reverse-centaur instead of a centaur like Doctorow? IMHO it's because of power-law rewards to good writing. Doctorow can make a living writing a few books because his books are popular. But the listicle writer can't charge that much per page so has to resort to increasing his page output with AI.

This is not the fault of AI!

My friend is an author, and she works very hard to write her books, at least as hard as, say, Steven King. You would not be surprised to hear that she does not make the same amount of money per hour worked as Steven King.

If Doctorow wants to get rid of reverse-centaurs, maybe he should face the actual problem instead of blaming the usual suspects.

Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#36

Post by jauntywundrkind »

There's some nuance in difference, but strong parallels to (the amazing) Ursala Franklin, who had two dichotomies:

Work vs control technologies: tech like a typewriter we use to write or a chisel to carve, versus tech that orchestrates and narrows human behavior.

Prescriptive vs holistic technologies: tech that expects the worker to confirm to the specific intended use, versus tech that expands the workers agency & possibility, enables them to do new things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Technological_...

Lovely post from Cory. I particularly liked the part about

> But his job wasn’t even to supervise the chatbot adequately (single-handedly fact-checking 10 lists of 15 items is a long, labor-intensive pro­cess). Rather, it was to take the blame for the factual inaccuracies in those lists. He was, in the phrasing of Dan Davies, "an accountability sink" (or as Madeleine Clare Elish puts it, a "moral crumple zone").

Corporations are new immortal giants striding the lands, and how their vast godlike powers are used is an absolutely earth-quaking terror, often. The diffusion of responsibility they enable, and the seeming inability or unwillingness of both the law & society to assess, to reward & penalize these giants is a great imo tragedy. We barely see, with our ant-sized view of the world.

Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#37

Post by cxr »

furyofantares wrote: post #2

I'm sorry, but is producing 10 lists of 15 items each really 50 peoples' worth of work? The amount of effort this would take today without the use of a chatbot seems overblown. Or with the use of a chatbot, but fact-checked, for that matter. edit: I'm not questioning how much work it was in the days of print. I think it's fairly false to paint it as if AI has much to do with the transition from high effort lists to l…

How many books should a person read before being able to pick 15 to recommend, and how long do you think it should take to read them?

Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#38

Post by arretevad »

GMoromisato wrote: post #35
harimau777 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem comes in the situation where an individual doesn't get to choose not to be a reverse centaur. E.g. because that's the only way for them to keep their job.

That makes sense, but Doctorow fails to go any deeper than "I don't think reverse-centaurs should exist." Why, for example, is the listicle author a reverse-centaur instead of a centaur like Doctorow? IMHO it's because of power-law rewards to good writing. Doctorow can make a living writing a few books because his books are popular. But the listicle writer can't charge that much per page so has to resort to increasin…

Like all problems, It’s possible there are many contributing factors. Power laws may be one. The usual suspects might carry some of the blame as well. These things are not mutually exclusive. It’s unlikely there is one “solution” that will fix the systemic issues that create reverse centaurs. I don’t see the value in writing someone off simply because they do not explore the entire solution space.

Re: Cory Doctorow: "centaurs" and "reverse-centaurs"

#39

Post by GMoromisato »

arretevad wrote: post #38
GMoromisato wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense, but Doctorow fails to go any deeper than "I don't think reverse-centaurs should exist." Why, for example, is the listicle author a reverse-centaur instead of a centaur like Doctorow? IMHO it's because of power-law rewards to good writing. Doctorow can make a living writing a few books because his books are popular. But the listicle writer can't charge that much per page so has to resort to increasin…

Like all problems, It’s possible there are many contributing factors. Power laws may be one. The usual suspects might carry some of the blame as well. These things are not mutually exclusive. It’s unlikely there is one “solution” that will fix the systemic issues that create reverse centaurs. I don’t see the value in writing someone off simply because they do not explore the entire solution space.

My original post fell short in that I criticized Doctorow without offering substance or examples. [Ironically, this is exactly what I accused him of!]

Later, in response to various people here, I wrote a more substantive critique, which I stand by. And I stand by my original opinion: Doctorow is a talented and entertaining writer, but I can't take him seriously.

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