philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The Human in the Noose: On the Special Hell of Marking an AI’s Homework

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In labor/automation theory, a “centaur” is a human assisted by a machine. The metaphor here is to the centaurs of Greek mythology, in which a reasoning human head rules over a horse’s strong and inexhaustible body. A machine-human centaur sees human intellect guiding a machine. You’re a centaur when you ride a bicycle (you even look like one!). You’re a centaur when you use a spell-checker, too. Being a centaur is great. ...

Maybe you’ve already anticipated the circumstances of a “reverse centaur”: when a machine directs the actions of a human. The human isn’t there to provide judgment or guidance; rather, the human is conscripted to serve as a peripheral to a machine, to do the tasks it can’t do for itself. ...

Here, then, is the answer to the paradox of the AI-assisted coders. The first group, the ones who are excited about the code they’re shipping using AI? They’re centaurs. They are deciding how and when to use AI. That’s labor-driven automation, and while workers aren’t infallible, skilled workers who know how to do their jobs are the best people to decide when and how to use a new tool.

The second group, the ones who are terrified about the tech debt they’re generating with AI? They’re not AI-assisted coders at all – they’re the human assistants to an AI. They’re working in shops where most of their colleagues have been fired, where they live every day in terror of losing their livelihoods, and where their jobs now consist of marking the AI’s homework at superhuman speed, for superhuman stretches. They’re called “humans in the loop,” but what they really are is accountability sinks and moral crumple-zones, the designated sacrificial lambs who will be offered up when the bad code that the AI slips past them wrecks something or kills someone. ...

The AI industry has created history’s most efficient money incinerators, and investors have been providing the fuel. ...

See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs-alt-view/