Society Is About To Change. And No One Is Ready | Richard Hames meets Garrison Lovely

**TL;DR:** AI capabilities double every six to seven months, but people either ignore it or misunderstand it; a small group is trying to make you obsolete, and we are not powerless. ## Three Schools of Thought on AI: Which One Are You? There are three basic positions on artificial intelligence: - **Accelerationists**: Want AI as fast as possible, think this is good, or simply love speed. - **Critics**: Believe AI is hot air, will hit a wall for technical or economic reasons, and sometimes think talking about AI is just marketing hype. - **Warriors** (the host identifies with this group): See the capability growth curve not hitting a wall, nor running out of funding or slowing down, but feel anxious that automation will lead to a near-total loss of power for the global working class. Guest Garrison Lovely also belongs to this group. Garrison Lovely is the author of *Obsolete: The Trillion-Dollar Race to Make You Obsolete — and How to Stop It*. He previously worked at McKinsey and became a whistleblower, describing McKinsey as "capital's willing executioner." Now, he believes the same description may apply to AI itself. ## "Jagged Intelligence": Why AI Both Amazes and Disappoints You Models surpass humans in some capabilities but fall far below ordinary people in others. The duration of tasks AI can handle doubles every six to seven months: 30-minute tasks → 60 minutes → 2 hours... The absolute increase every three to six months exceeds the total increase of the previous five years. But AI makes mistakes that a human would never make—for example, fixing one bug introduces a new bug, and fixing that new bug brings back the old bug. A human programmer fixes it and leaves it alone. This "jagged frontier" makes it hard to understand AI: if a human scored the same on all tests and ran equally fast in so many domains, you'd exclaim "a polymath genius." But AI is not human intelligence; its non-human nature is both the source of its capabilities and what makes it terrifying. ## Metaphors: Shoggoth and Fatberg - **Shoggoth** (H.P. Lovecraft's multi-tentacled, multi-eyed monster): On the surface, AI is a friendly smiley face, but behind it lies something alien and weird. - **Fatberg** (huge masses of fat and wet wipes in London sewers): When you interact with Claude or GPT, the friendly responses you get are actually a small scoop sampled from this fatberg. These metaphors show that our natural way of understanding AI is confused by its reality. ## Why You Should Still Use These Tools Many people stop using AI because of the environment, not wanting to support the company, or disliking the experience. But Garrison argues that if you don't actively use frontier models, push them, and at the same time make strong assertions about what they cannot do, you create a distorted cognitive environment. "If you care about the mission you're working on, you should use the best tool for that mission. Refusing to use it is like avoiding a smartphone—you can do that, but it only causes trouble in life. Even if you oppose Apple or the exploitation in its supply chain, we are already participating in this system. We can change it more than the harm we cause as marginal users." ## Who Is *Obsolete* For? What Does It Aim to Convince? Garrison wants to talk to people who are curious about AI but don't know where to start, and who don't trust anyone in the field. His book tries to: 1. Explain from zero background what the industry is doing and why. 2. Sort through arguments from all sides and answer common questions: Is AI a bubble? Will it take jobs? Can't we just pull the plug? 3. Build a new framework for understanding the technology, critique the classic AI safety perspective, and propose what we should build and what we should stop. Core argument: A small group of people is trying to make you obsolete. Almost nobody wants them to succeed, but we are letting them succeed for three reasons: - Not realizing it's happening. - Not thinking it can succeed. - Not thinking we can stop it. The book examines each reason and argues: we can stop it. ## Technology and Power: From McKinsey to AI Garrison wrote about his experiences after leaving McKinsey, calling McKinsey "capital's willing executioner." Now he worries that AI will play the same role—automation-driven concentration of power will weaken the global working class. He thinks the claim that "AI will become extremely powerful and might take over the world or disempower people" is most often made by Elon Musk or Sam Altman, but the things they build have repeatedly proven untrustworthy. We shouldn't ignore the strength of the argument just because the source is problematic. ## Other Connections in the Conversation This episode connects with previous shows featuring Luke Kemp (AI existential risk), Quinn Liedtian and Ben Tarnoff (Elon Musk empire), Lisa Seranian (personality and AI), and others. A complete "Do Your Own Research" map is available on the Navara Media website. --- **Source:** Society Is About To Change. And No One Is Ready | Richard Hames meets Garrison Lovely (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXozPnrCibk)