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Democracy Now! speaks with science fiction author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow about AI and his latest book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence — Before It’s Too Late.

Doctorow comments on AI’s “bad unit economics” and the connection between automation and labor. “When labor drives automation, it’s usually in service to making the product better, and when capital drives automation, it’s usually in service to making more of the product,” says Doctorow.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Earlier this month, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire when his company SpaceX went public in the biggest IPO in Wall Street history. SpaceX is a space flight, satellite internet, social media and AI conglomerate. The value of SpaceX initially soared, but it’s since fallen as part of a global sell-off in tech stocks. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Musk had lost his status as a trillionaire, at least temporarily. This all comes as fears are growing of a possible AI bubble that could collapse, triggering an economic recession.

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AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Cory Doctorow, acclaimed tech activist, journalist, science fiction author, has worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation for decades. His latest book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence — Before It’s Too Late. His previous book titled — let’s see, how should I say it on a broadcast? — En[bleep]ification — but that’s not really the title — Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.

We want to thank you so much for being with us, Cory. And also, I want to congratulate you. You have talked publicly about your cancer diagnosis, and also put it in the context of AI, what’s good and problematic about it. But congrats on feeling better.

CORY DOCTOROW: Thank you very much. Yes, six days since the radiologist told me that I am cancer-free. So, let’s hope the next time I go in for a scan, they reaffirm that.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, you have really shared with people your concerns about AI when it comes to radiology. Talk about how medicine is using it.

CORY DOCTOROW: So, you know, in my other life, I’m a science fiction writer. And people sometimes think science fiction is about describing a gadget. And I think what science fiction is really about is exploring who the gadget does things for and who the gadget does things to. And that’s where radiology comes in.

We’ve heard some pretty credible stuff about how AI can be used to spot solid mass tumors that sometimes humans miss. And, you know, if there was a sales call right now at your local hospital, where there was a pitchman for an AI company telling the hospital administrator, “Here’s what we’re going to do. Right now you have 10 radiologists. They cost $3 million a year. They review a hundred X-rays a day each. And I tell you what: I’m going to sell you a chatbot for a million bucks a year. And it’s going to sit in the shadows, and a couple of times a day, it’s going to tap your radiologist on the shoulder and say, ‘Why don’t you take another look at that one? I’d be very happy,’” that would seem like a real advance on medicine. But that’s not how the pitch is going.

Now, radiologists have a lot of market power, so I’m not saying that this is where they’re going to end up, because right now they’re in short supply. But what the AI companies want to sell you is: fire nine-tenths of your radiologists, save $2.7 million a year, split that between the hospital shareholders and Sam Altman, take that remaining radiologist and put them in charge of marking the AI’s homework, put them in charge of clicking OK a hundred times a minute for the radiology reports that are coming out of the chatbot, and then, when it misses something and someone dies, blame that guy, make him what Dan Davies calls the “accountability sink” for the AI. And, you know, right now the way that we’re using this extremely interesting and impressive technology is to replace humans in jobs where we don’t care if those jobs are done well. And it’s pretty awful to be living through.

I wrote this book because I got so sick of people demanding that I talk with them about AI, because it’s just not important enough that we should all be paying attention to it — massive miscalculation, because now I have to go everywhere and talk about AI.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: But if you could comment, the example of radiologists — and radiologists, of course, also play a big role in the early detection or the detection of cancer when it’s already there. Now, there are a number of leading cancer specialists that increasingly view AI as a vital........

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