I recently read Cory Doctorow’s book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI , and found its framework for assessing workplace automation particularly compelling. Doctorow frames his argument with the analogy of a Centaur that contrasts two ways humans and machines interact: A Centaur (Human-Directed) : Think of a mythological centaur as a human head on a horse’s body. In this arrangement, the human is in control, using the machine as a tireless tool to augment their own intellect, judgment, and choices. Examples include riding a bicycle, using a spell checker, or a radiologist using AI to double-check an X-ray (p. 8). A Reverse Centaur (Machine-Directed) : This flips the metaphor so that a machine’s "head" (or an algorithmic system) is driving a human "body". The human is conscripted as an assistant or peripheral to the machine, forced to keep up with a relentless, inhuman digital pace (p. 9). Doctorow’s framework spans the economic/political spheres, but two...