Garrison Lovely's book Obsolete: the trillion-dollar AI race to replace us, and how to stop it
GarrisonLovely · x · 2026-10-17
Garrison Lovely's new book Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace Us—and How to Stop It (OR Books & Nation Books) is out. He says he has many disagreements with EA/AI-safety-adjacent narratives and you don't need the wilder claims to oppose what's happening now.
Key points
- Frames the core questions: is AI a bubble or humanity's last invention, an existing harm or existential threat?
- Cuts through hype and false binaries to answer common AI questions while raising new ones
- Publishers Weekly calls it "a disquieting debut" with evidence to unsettle even AI boosters
- Early praise calls it "the best book I've read on AI... Sam Altman would hate it"
- Argues unchecked AI development entrenches global inequality, and proposes ways to respond
His simpler framing: companies are trying to replace us with machines — that alone is reason to stop them, no doom scenarios required.
Related event: Garrison Lovely's new book Obsolete argues for pausing AGI development(4 posts)→
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