Centaur

Quick meaning: Centaur is a noun meaning (Greek mythology) 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.

Meaning

(Greek mythology) 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.

More Meanings

1. (astronomy, also capitalized) One of a number of icy planetoids that orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune.
2. (chess) A chess-playing team comprising a human player and a computer who work together.
3. (by extension, artificial intelligence) A human and an AI who work together.

Example Sentences

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.

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.

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.

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.

Word Forms

• centaurs

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include atlas, centaurdom, centauress, sagittary, merperson, centauromachy.

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