Many experts see human-AI collaboration as the future of work, but it may be only a temporary phase. From chess to factory floors to medicine, the history of automation shows a recurring pattern: humans are first augmented by machines, then overtaken by them.
In 2023, as everyone zigged and talked about “prompt engineering” as the future, I zagged, putting out the article, “Prompt Engineering Jobs are a Mirage.” It’s time to zag again: centaurs are only a step on the road to the future, not the end state. Humans get augmented by human/machine combinations, but then machines outperform even the duo.
The term centaur has been around for a number of years, and isn’t yet as popular as prompt engineering, although I suspect it (or a similar term) may be in the coming years as AI layoffs ramp up. In Greek mythology, a centaur had the head of a man and the body of a horse (see centaur images on Wikipedia). In technology it means a machine (the workhorse), which is managed by a human.
Garry Kasparov championed centaur chess (also called cyborg chess or advanced chess), in which a very advanced human leads a team of chess computers. The computers can look ahead far more moves than a human can, but the (advanced) human can direct and guide the strategy.
Chess grandmasters have Elo ratings (the chess ranking system) above 2,500. That’s already impressive. Getting to 2,600 or 2,700 puts you into the elite even among grandmasters. Top humans have ratings just above 2,800, with the current world champion Magnus Carlsen having achieved a score of 2,882. The early centaur chess players did even better, with a grandmaster at the helm, often getting a rating over 3,000.
But while working on an article about the benefits of humans and machines working together, I realized my thesis was wrong. While centaur chess was popular twenty-some years ago, you don’t hear about it much today. The reason is that the top chess software dominates both man and man+machine. computerchess.org.uk/4040/ lists the best software in tournament 40/40 play (40/40 has to do with the timing of the chess match). As of March 22, 2026, the top software comes in at over 3,600; nearly all of the top 100 software programs are ranked at least 3,400. In other words, machines won out. Centaurs are just a footnote in the history of chess.
But chess isn’t the only domain in which we find centaurs. Assembly line workers in the nineteenth century needed physical strength and stamina; turning screws all day was exhausting work. In the twentieth century pneumatic tools reduced the amount of physical strength needed. Strength wasn’t needed to turn the screws, although holding a heavy pneumatic tool all day was still tiresome. Centaurs, humans using pneumatic tools, clearly beat out raw human labor. Now in the twenty-first century, those centaur assembly line workers have been replaced by robots. As with chess, the human became the limiting factor. Robots can work 24/7 without getting tired or needing coffee breaks. While not every physical task can be done by a robot today, more and more can, and where they can be, the human will be replaced in the name of efficiency.
John Henry was a steel driver; he’d hammer spikes into rock to make blasting holes for creating a tunnel. The lore of John Henry is that in a test of man versus machine, he beat the steam drill. But it was a pyrrhic victory. He died from the exhaustion of the effort and man soon gave way to machines. The steam drill became the tool of the trade. However, the centaur of the worker and his drill have been replaced by tunnel boring machines (sometimes called moles).
While you might argue that those vehicles are still driven by humans, 99% of the work is done by the machine. And even if that’s enough to make it a centaur, how soon before autonomous driving replaces the human completely?
AI has been shown to be better than doctors at some tasks, like detecting certain types of cancer. However, a recent study by The Lancet showed that, after working with AI, the doctors’ skills got worse after the AI was removed (Time magazine article summarizing the study). To be fair, the study suggests that, like any skill, it begins to worsen from disuse.
AI isn’t ready to fully replace doctors anytime soon. Dr. Bruce Y. Lee notes the seriousness of its mistakes in his Forbes article, “ChatGPT Provided Wrong Advice In Over 50% Medical Emergencies Tested,” citing the Nature Medicine brief communication, “ChatGPT Health performance in a structured test of triage recommendations.” However, history suggests more and more clinical tasks will follow the same path. Yes, medicine is a sensitive and regulated area where mistakes cost lives. The same is true for flying and driving, and both of those industries have continued to see software manage more and more of the tasks as technology advances.
I have tremendous respect for Garry Kasparov. As a competitive chess player in my youth, I admired him for his success, and as an adult, I admire him for his politics. Unfortunately, “Kasparov’s Law,” suggesting that human-AI cyborgs are the ultimate winners, is not borne out by history; it is only a phase, not the conclusion.
We’ve seen over and over again, for both physical and mental tasks the same pattern. Human performance is replaced with a centaur of a machine-assisted human. However, this is just an evolutionary step; it can take place over decades, as on the assembly lines, or years, as with centaur chess. But in the end, both humans and centaurs are bested by the machine-only option.
It’s critical to learn about corporate culture before you accept a job offer but it can be awkward to raise such questions. Learn what to ask and how to ask it to avoid landing yourself in a bad situation.
Investing just a few hours per year will help you focus and advance in your career.
Groups with a high barrier to entry and high trust are often the most valuable groups to join.
