A “centaur” is a human helped by a machine: the person sets the direction, the machine supplies the horsepower, and together they are better than either one alone.
Tech activist Cory Doctorow’s nightmare is the reverse centaur: a human conscripted to serve a machine. His key example is the delivery driver whose route, pace and bathroom breaks are dictated by an algorithm. The machine does the thinking; the human supplies a cheap, disposable body.
