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Imagine a truck driver where artificial intelligence doesn't just plot the route but monitors every movement, fines them for singing aloud, and demands impossible endurance. This isn't a dystopian scenario but the everyday reality of the modern economy. Here, the human doesn't drive the machine—the machine drives the human.

Inversion of the Myth: From Symbiosis to Parasitism

In his new work, "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI," writer Cory Doctorow examines the fundamental transformation of human-technology interaction. The classic "centaur" is a symbiosis where the human remains the head making decisions, while the machine serves as the body amplifying their capabilities. A bicycle, a hearing aid, or autocomplete in an editor are vivid examples of such beneficial hybridization.

However, the modern trend is the "reverse centaur," where the mechanics become the head, and the human is reduced to the role of a biological executor. Doctorow defines this as "a call to serve as an assistant to the machine, at an inhuman, mechanical pace." The term traces back to Garry Kasparov's experiments with "advanced chess," where a grandmaster with AI consistently beat both humans and machines individually. But now the question has shifted from efficiency to power: who in this pair makes the decisions?

Industry at the Service of Algorithms

The most striking examples of "reverse centaurs" are in fields where algorithms dictate the pace. Amazon drivers, whose vans are packed with AI cameras, are forced to skip meal and bathroom breaks to meet schedules calculated for superhuman endurance. In warehouses, algorithms distribute tasks and penalize slowness, stripping employees of autonomy.

The situation in software development is also telling. Tools like GitHub Copilot, intended to be assistants, turn programmers from creators into supervisors. Developers are forced to produce "impossible volumes of code," reviewing and correcting AI-generated output, while the machine sets the pace and the human bears responsibility for errors.

Particularly alarming is the "human-in-the-loop" model in law, medicine, and finance. AI generates a draft decision, and the expert must verify it at superhuman speed, taking full responsibility for the algorithm's mistakes. In the media industry, three journalists with AI tools are required to produce the volume of content that ten employees once created, transforming them from authors into filters.

The Bubble Economy and the Price of "Fun Arithmetic"

This "asymmetry of power" is not a coincidence but a systemic consequence of economic incentives. The employer sees an attractive formula: replace ten employees with three using AI. Savings are achieved not through increased efficiency but by redistributing workload and risks onto the remaining staff. Here, AI is a management tool for the top of the hierarchy and a subordination tool for the lower levels.

Doctorow warns of a financial bubble around AI, estimating it at $1.4 trillion. The seven largest companies make up more than a third of the stock market, but their models rely on mutual obligations and expectations. After the bubble bursts, he argues, only a "useful residue" will remain—cheap open models for local tasks.

The Right to Choose: The Future Is Not Predetermined

The key paradox is that savings on verification are illusory. If every AI result requires checking, the cost of labor is comparable to doing it independently. Profit arises only when verification costs are shifted onto the employee, forcing them to work longer and faster without pay.

Individual salvation lies in the conscious use of AI as a tool, not a guide. At the political level, regulatory initiatives are needed that consider not only safety but also the purposes of application, as well as workers' right to a voice in the implementation of automation. The fate of this technology is not an inevitability but a matter of choice.

My view: As long as the market capitalizes on expectations rather than real productivity, "reverse centaurs" remain a convenient model for extracting profit from human labor. The turning point will come only when companies realize that total control and speed without sustainability lead to the degradation of the economy itself, not just its workers.