THE REVERSE CENTAUR'S GUIDE TO LIFE AFTER AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late, latest Doctorow klaxon

THE REVERSE CENTAUR'S GUIDE TO LIFE AFTER AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence—Before It's Too Late
CORY DOCTOROW
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Whether you want to criticize, kill, or use AI, you have to get through the hype and uncover the real story.

Start with labor: in automation theory, a centaur is a person who chooses to use technology to help them do the things that matter to them. A reverse centaur is a person who has been conscripted to serve as a helper for a machine, at an inhuman, machine pace: a driver made to deliver all day long, nonstop; a warehouse worker made to work without food or bathroom breaks; a programmer made to crank out impossible amounts of code. As Doctorow says: it's not enough to ask what the technology does—we have to understand who it's doing it for and who it's doing it to.

The intended audience for AI hype isn't the people who are forced to use AI. The AI show is a performance staged for bosses and investors. Investment bankers claim AI will to be worth more than $16 trillion: a number that only makes sense if AI replaces vast swathes of the wage-earning human workforce. To justify that level of "value," every story about AI must be presented as inevitable, world-changing disruption. Even the tales of the robot apocalypse are a calculated attempt to bolster the fearsome power of AI.

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. When the AI bubble bursts, what will we salvage? Is there something in the wreckage that everyday people will find useful? In The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI—as he so successfully did in Enshittification—Doctorow recounts both how we found ourselves in this dire situation and how we can get through it, to a life "after" AI in which the tools work for us, not the other way around.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The argument I myownself have against "AI" (which isn't and won't be intelligent the way humans are) is financial. There is an AI bubble running right now that's gifted us the utterly brummagem world's first trillionaire. Look a little more deeply into SpaceX's IPO, you'll see how much of it's built on AI (which was partially trained on stolen US Government data via the little dickweeds from DOGE).

It really looks a lot like a gigantic pump-and-dump scheme when one reads Author Cory's work as digested and documented in this scathing book. He's been in the trenches reporting on tech matters for what feels like forever. Enshittification, anyone? It must make the guy a crazy person to present his deeply researched, well sourced and informed conclusions to general apathy. It lights fires under some of us, my dude, so please don't stop!

Especially relevant to my eagerness to share this book with all y'all is the centering of "AI"'s intended impact on labor. It's Author Cory's clear statement that the bubble's partly fueled by tech scum's intense desire to destroy any power of workers over their work, the conditions and rewards thereof, and the very nature of employment as reconstituted post-Great Depression. Wealth inequality is something "AI" is designed to entrench.

I hope a skilled human copyeditor went over this book after my DRC was created. There are some amusing errors of fact that, honestly, trouble me a bit, eg referring to trustbusting under FDR instead of his distant cousin TR. Some other errors niggled at me, but...well...consider the subject matter, maybe these sorts of issues are proof positive of the validity of Author Cory's thesis...?

I'm very serious when I say this: reading this book can give you tools to manage your personal interactions with the "AI" being rammed down our unwilling throats to further enrich the riches scum ever to rise to the controlling positions they're now it. It can do this by alerting the complacent or avoidant reader to what is actually at risk in this economic bubble's inflation.

An easy prose style delivers a hard-to-fathom message. It's one of my favorite reads of 2026. Please get one and read it. Libraries are very likely to have copies in stock now. Of course, if you can, making the purchase for your own shelves or devices is the best way to support Author Cory in his quest to wake us all up to the threats...and the opportunities knowing they're there present...to our essential human nature.

UNIVERSITY REVOLUTION: Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Learning, AI...ugh

UNIVERSITY REVOLUTION: Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Learning
KEVIN P. HALLINAN
Self-publisher (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: AI is reshaping education—are universities ready to evolve? The future of education is here, and AI is changing the way we teach, learn, and measure understanding.

Higher education stands at a turning point. AI is transforming classrooms, offering personalized learning, expanding access to knowledge, and reshaping the role of educators.

As AI advances, universities cling to outdated models instead of embracing its potential to improve education. A system built for today’s learners would use AI to strengthen learning, not replace it.

In University Revolution, Dr. Kevin Hallinan explores how AI is already transforming learning at every level, from early education to higher education and beyond.

AI isn’t something to fear—it’s a chance to rethink how we connect with students, support teachers, and prepare learners for a changing world. This shift is already underway. Whether you’re a teacher, administrator, parent, or student, this book offers valuable insights into the future of education.

If you enjoyed Brave New Words by Salman Khan {another rah-rah-AI tome, non-affiliate Amazon link}, don’t miss this timely and thought-provoking exploration of AI’s role in shaping the future of learning. The classroom is evolving—are we evolving with it?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The author's Amazon bio, clearly sourced from here:

Dr. Kevin Hallinan is Emeritus Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Dayton and Director of Impact Mining at Synota.io, where he advances solar micro-grids and AI-driven eduction in sub-Saharan Africa. A NASA researcher early in his career, he later founded UD's ETHOS program and Renewable and Clean Energy Program, focusing on engineering for social impact. Known for pioneering transdisciplinary learning, his recent work explores big data, machine learning, and the role of AI in education. This book reflects his ongoing experiments with equitable AI. All proceeds support the AI 4 All movement.

His website, linked from University of Dayton's page for him (linked above) contains a tab entitled "My AI Agents."

This gent is a true believer. I don't agree with him on the uses of AI in education. Work harder for it than you've ever worked in your life is more my speed. However, he is aware of problems that normies have with AI's developers' theft of intellectual property enough to have an AI Agent called "Ethical AI Mentor". I myownself do not believe such a concept carries any meaning whatsoever until all AI developers assign all...100%...of all past and future income from any and all sources, personal or professional, to a reparations fund that fully supports artists, journalists, writers, actors, and ad-copy-writing hacks...but zero for executives, investors, or other capitalists...the world over, to the AI thieves' desired standard of living while they subsist in The Felonious Yam's Salvadoran prisons with no internet access.

That being up there with guillotines for billionaires in the likelihood sweeps, realistic acceptance of the way LLMs are going to be used demands understanding what the plan is for that use.

There isn't one. There's about a hundred. Flood the field, boys, pick their pockets while they're whirling around in confusion!

Making yourself aware of the parameters of the grift and what a possible decent case for use and development of it is can very profitably start here. This gent clearly thinks there's a case for moving ahead in this direction, believing the owners of AI will actually allow fair and equitable access to the technology, and allow it to close massive advantage gaps that it could undeniably do. That being the same kind of naïve thinking that gave us engagement maximization algorithms back in the "internet can be good" era, I'm confident crushing regulatory burdens and confiscatory levels of taxation around the globe are clearly going to be required to stop this hideous future from coming to be.

As that would require actual forethought and cooperation among nations, I suppose the thieves are safe. I refer you the the UN for an example of what this concept looks like.

Being a tiny, trivially easy to swat nobody, I expect to be targeted and punished for daring not to be on board with this crap. If I vanish, you'll know why.

SUPREMACY: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World, but will it be for the better?

SUPREMACY: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World
PARMY OLSON
St. Martin's Press
$30.00 harcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was an AI chatbot called ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world’s two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, who now steers Google's AI efforts, has remained elusive—until now.

In Supremacy, Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, tells the astonishing story of the battle between these two AI firms, their struggles to use their tech for good, and the hazardous direction they could go as they serve two tech monopolies whose power is unprecedented in history. The story focuses on the continuing rivalry of two key CEOs at the center of it all, who cultivated a religion around their mission to build god-like super intelligent machines: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of DeepMind.

Supremacy sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence that its top creators are ignoring: the profit-driven spread of flawed and biased technology into industries, education, media and more. With exclusive access to a network of high-ranking sources, Parmy Olson uses her 13 years of experience covering technology to bring to light the exploitation of the greatest invention in human history, and how it will impact us all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I urge you to read this book. It does not matter what your politics are, It especially does not matter if you care even a scintilla about technology. This is not a book about the way these...people, I must be polite...are making their dream of an AGI happen, it's about the people doing it, the people giving them the money to do it, and how all of those pieces are failing to do a good job for Humanity. It's important to know what is happening, you are already getting "AI-assisted" stuff advertised to you and no smallest advisory, still less a warning, about what that means.

I strongly urge you to read this book. Before the election if possible, but soon no matter what.

Please.