Obsolete: Power, Profit, and the Race for Machine Superintelligence

Depending on who you ask, artificial intelligence is our salvation or our doom; an overhyped, bigoted hallucination machine or the ticket to immortality and utopian abundance; just another tech fad or the last invention we need ever make. The AI discourse is confusing, messy, and frustrating. But the technology -- and our response to it -- will shape the future, whether or not we're part of the conversation.

Obsolete is for those who are interested in learning more about AI, but unsure of where to start and who to believe. They may feel intimidated by the technical jargon, put off by dry and abstract prose, or skeptical of the loudest voices on the issue (like Elon Musk and Sam Altman). Obsolete will introduce readers to the basics of AI, the idea that it could lead to human extinction, the roiling three-sided debate surrounding extinction fears, and the people and companies trying to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- that which can outwit humans across the board. The book will grapple with the core arguments animating the AI debates, which are, by turns, uncritically parroted and unduly dismissed. It will also cut through industry hype while seriously entertaining the implications of AGI.

The risk that AGI could result in our extinction is being recognized by a significant and growing number of leading AI researchers, industrialists, and policymakers, along with the wider public. Existential risk from AI has been explored in other books, but Obsolete will be the first to center its analysis on how both capitalist and great power competition make AI more dangerous.

Obsolete will also tackle questions like: Can machines actually outsmart humanity? If so, when could that happen? If AGI is possible, is it inevitable? Why are people trying to build a technology they claim could end the world? Is the idea of AI-driven extinction the product of a big tech conspiracy aiming to hype the technology and control its regulation? Why has the left mostly ignored or dismissed existential risk from AI? Why do some powerful techies welcome human extinction? How could AI enable stable authoritarian regimes? How could killer robots reshape war and the balance of power? What do China and the US want from AI? And why has it become the front line of their brewing Cold War? And finally: What can and should the left do about it?