How to Think About AI Before It’s Too Late

June 19, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Cory Doctorow opens his conversation on Galaxy Brain with a disarmingly modest example of how he uses AI: a local language model running on his laptop that catches typos in his blog posts. It once noticed he had referred to "saturation theory" in a URL and then called it "saturation hypothesis" in the text, and asked if he meant the same thing. "That was amazing," he says. "Genuinely helpful." But this small, useful tool is a long way from the $1.4 trillion global capital expenditure that Goldman Sachs predicts for AI infrastructure by 2027. Doctorow's argument is not against the technology itself—he uses it, and likes it—but against the ideology that surrounds it: who builds it, who controls it, and who it is designed to serve.

Centaurs and Reverse Centaurs

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What you'll learn

1 (00:57) **The Boss's Fantasy: A World Without Workers** - Charlie Warzel introduces the core tension: bosses have always wanted to replace workers with machines, but AI offers the specific fantasy of eliminating the need to argue with employees.
2 (01:42) **Introducing Cory Doctorow and the "Reverse Centaur"** - Warzel frames Doctorow as a uniquely shrewd critic who combines technical skill with activist perspective, and introduces his new book.
3 (04:19) **Doctorow's Personal AI Use: A Centaur Setup** - Doctorow describes his daily use of a local LLM (Ollama) as a spell-checker and consistency checker for his blog.
4 (06:52) **Defining Centaurs and Reverse Centaurs** - The core framework of the book is explained.
5 (10:11) **Why Reverse Centaurs Are Engineered: The AI Bubble** - Doctorow explains that the AI boom is a massive bubble driven by the need for mature tech companies to find a new growth narrative.
6 (14:54) **The Ideology: Why Bosses Love Reverse Centaurs** - The core reason capital allocators are so excited about AI is the fantasy of a workplace without workers.
7 (19:10) **Is the AI Bubble Real? The Case for Skepticism** - Doctorow argues the AI industry is a massive bubble, not a sustainable business, despite real demand.

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Show Notes

Cory Doctorow has a refrain: “The most important thing about a gadget isn’t what it does; it’s who it does it for and what it does it to.” In this episode of “Galaxy Brain,” he sits down with Charlie Warzel to talk about the AI boom, making the case that the hype, vision, and dreams of endless growth are unsustainable. Doctorow expands on his viral “enshittification” thesis: a critique of AI based around power and whether we are using AI tools or being used by them.

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