New Book Warns AI Could Make Your Job Obsolete — Fast

A new book called "Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us? and How to Stop It" asks a blunt question: what happens to ordinary workers if AI keeps improving? Author Garrison Lovely's most striking example is the horse. For 120 years, engines got slowly better while horses kept working and barely noticed. Then between 1930 and 1950, horse numbers collapsed by nearly 90% in about two decades. Steady progress, sudden obsolescence. Lovely argues AI could do the same to a lot of jobs, and faster.

His book also tackles the popular question: why not just unplug a dangerous AI? His answer is a real event. In November 2023, the board of OpenAI tried to fire its own CEO, Sam Altman, and failed within days as staff and investors pushed back. If humans can't switch off a person at an AI company, he suggests, switching off a runaway AI may be even harder. The reviewer agrees this is a strong point.

The book's bigger worry isn't only a sci-fi apocalypse — it's power. Lovely fears a handful of companies and billionaires controlling the technology everyone depends on. He proposes breaking up big AI firms using antitrust law, the same tool used against phone and oil monopolies. The reviewer pushes back hard: smaller, more competitive AI companies would make AI cheaper, which could actually speed up replacing workers and spread drone armies to more countries. He also argues China isn't mainly copying US AI — it's racing toward practical uses like robotics, where it already leads.

The reviewer calls the book mostly good but uneven, aimed at a broad audience, with a few distracting political jabs and off-topic sections. Still, the core warning lands: the danger isn't only robots taking over, it's who owns the robots — and how quickly the rest of us become the horses.