If you haven't heard of this analogy, Doctorow's 'centaur' model is one that describes current-gen LLM usage as, broadly, either "using" or "being used by" generative tech. I'm working up a broader analysis of this, but in short I think there's a third category and a meta-commentary that bears on it.
In his model, you have:
- Centaurs, which subordinate generative models to people
- Reverse Centaurs, in which people are subordinated to generative tech
I'd propose a third category, which is more traditional, where the generative tech complements a person's abilities. Some examples:
- Centaur - Do this thing that I can do, but better or faster
- Augment - Help me research this domain I don't have yet, but know how to learn about
- Reverse Centaur - Robots aren't great at hands, so be the robot's hands
More to follow.
