centaur
nounUK /ˈsɛn.tɔː/ · US /ˈsɛn.tɔɹ/
Etymology From Latin centaurus, from Ancient Greek κένταυρος (kéntauros), from Κένταυρος (Kéntauros, “a member of a savage race from Thessaly”).
1
Human sciences, Mysticism, Mythology, Philosophy, Sciences Greek A mythical beast having a horse's body with a man's head and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse.
2
Astronomy, Natural sciences Also, Capitalized One of a number of icy planetoids that orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune.
3
Board games, Chess, Games A chess-playing team comprising a human player and a computer who work together.
- This was not Kasparov's approach. Instead of rejecting the machines, he returned the year after his defeat to Deep Blue with a different kind of chess, which he called ‘Advanced Chess’. Other names for Advanced Chess include ‘cyborg’ and ‘centaur’ chess.2018, James Bridle, New Dark Age: Technology, Knowledge and the End of the Future, Verso Books, →ISBN, page 159:
4
Broadly A human and an AI who work together.
Artificial intelligence
- The first—termed “cyborgs” by the authors—intertwined with the AI, moulding, checking and refining its responses, while the second—“centaurs”—divided labour, handing off more AI-suited subtasks while focussing on their own areas of expertise.2023 November 11, John Burn-Murdoch, “Generative AI and white-collar jobs: reasons to be wary”, in FT Weekend (The FT View section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 8:
- Programming has not yet gone the way of chess. But the centaurs have arrived. GPT-4 on its own is, for the moment, a worse programmer than I am. Ben is much worse. But Ben plus GPT-4 is a dangerous thing.2023 November 13, James Somers, “A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft”, in The New Yorker, →ISSN:
1 more example
- A centaur goes in circles if the human half doesn’t know what it’s doing. That’s where the panic over pedagogy comes in.2025 October 26, Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Age of De-Skilling”, in The Atlantic:
- Derived terms
- centaurdom, centauresque, centauress, centaurette, centaurial, centaurian, centauric, centauroid, ichthyocentaur, onocentaur, taur