Empire of AI

A gripping new account of the battle for AI supremacy… tense and absorbing – Emine Saner * Guardian *A veteran AI reporter, Hao’s more detailed account of OpenAI’s progress… doesn’t pull any punches – Richard Waters * Financial Times *Excellent and deeply reported – Tim Wu * New York Times *Hao’s reporting inside OpenAI is exceptional, and she’s persuasive in her argument that the public should focus less on A.I.’s putative ‘sentience’ and more on its implications for labor and the environment – Benjamin Wallace-Wells * New Yorker *Startling and intensely researched … an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us * Vulture *Deeply researched, gripping * Economist *A bestselling page-turner that has made waves not just in Silicon Valley but around the world … With Empire of AI, Hao is fundamentally shaping many people’s perceptions and understanding of the company at the center of the AI revolution * TIME Magazine, “TIME100 AI 2025” *An epic exposé that pulls back the curtain on the egos and uneasy compromises behind the rise of OpenAI and ChatGPT. It’s full of dark details, some of them bordering on absurd, that shows how much of the AI boom runs on secrecy and is driven by questionable ideologies. This book serves as a warning about the price we all pay when AI builders who dreamed of utopia got swept up in a race to build empires instead – Parmy Olson, Bloomberg columnist and author of Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World Our lives are about to be remade by artificial intelligence—or to be more accurate, by a few companies run by a few very self-confident people. If you ever wondered whether all of this is inevitable, whether to believe all the promises of tech luminaries, whether we could save a little bit of our democracy in the age of AI, then read this book! – Daron Acemoglu, recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic SciencesWith devastating revelations, deep insider research, and delightful page-turning delivery, Karen Hao shows us why she is one of the foremost tech journalists covering AI. From data centers in Chile to data workers in Kenya, Empire of AI reveals the hidden human and environmental costs behind AI products that have triggered a race for land, water, and cheap labor to cement power in the hands of a few. Empire of AI is the warning we need—just as more open and less energy-intensive alternatives reveal that a different AI future is possible and achievable – Dr. Joy Buolamwini, author of Unmasking AI

Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She writes for publications including The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center’s AI Spotlight Series. She was formerly a tech reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30. She received her B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.