Freeze AI: Author borrows 1980s nuclear freeze movement playbook to rein in AI industry
GarrisonLovely · x · 2026-10-10
Garrison Lovely, writing in The Nation (adapted from his book Obsolete, out Sept 29, 2026), argues the AI industry's race to replace humans — what he calls the Obsoleting Project — can be checked by lessons from the 1980s nuclear freeze movement.
Key points:
- ChatGPT was adopted faster than any consumer software; Anthropic's revenue grew faster than any company at its scale; Manhattan and Apollo fail to capture the project's scale.
- Randall Forsberg's 1980 "Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race" sparked one of the century's most remarkable mass movements, showing collective action can shape history.
- Despite AI's unprecedented nature, stopping it doesn't require reinventing the wheel — now is the moment for a mass Freeze AI movement.
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