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How To Think About AI Before It’s Too Late / Cory Doctorow

Jul 14
 I think AI can distract us from political debates if we get caught up in the wrong kind of debate, right? If we stipulate to the idea that AI can do your job as opposed to the idea that your boss is such a credulous doof that he can be sold an AI that can do your job and will still fire you and put the AI in your place, then we help them sell AI. And that's a giant political distraction. If we get caught up in these absurd debates about whether teaching the word guessing program risks too many words, risks the word guessing program waking up and becoming God and turning us into paperclips, we are being distracted from real political discussions.

Cory Doctorow returns to This Is Hell! to talk about his new book “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide To Life After AI - How To Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It’s Too Late”, published by Macmillan Publishers.                                   
 
For over twenty years, Cory has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to safeguard and further our human rights online. He was the coeditor of the weblog Boing Boing for nineteen years and now maintains a daily(ish) newsletter at Pluralistic.net

Follow Cory on bluesky at @doctorow.pluralistic.net

We will have new installments of Rotten History and Hangover Cure. We will also be sharing your answers to this week's Question from Hell! from Patreon.

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Guest

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently Enshittification:Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It (Verso, 2025). In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

https://pluralistic.net

 

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