Empire of AI

“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“Excellent and deeply reported.” —Tim Wu, The 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 “Deeply researched, gripping.” —The Economist“Empire of AI is a powerful work, bristling not only with great reporting but also with big ideas.” —Mat Honan, MIT Technology Review“Timely and myth-busting … well reported … doesn’t pull any punches.” —Financial Times“Well-reported … urgent.” —Kirkus“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, Institute Professor, MIT, and recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences“With 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, founder of Algorithmic Justice League and best-selling author of Unmasking AI“In her brilliant book, Empire of AI, Karen Hao chronicles the mania surrounding artificial intelligence and OpenAI. With a cast of scientists, scammers, and scoundrels, Empire of AI documents the hype campaign that caused the world to fall in love with a technology whose immediate harms are legion and benefits remain unproved.” —Roger McNamee, New York Times-bestselling author of Zucked“Karen Hao’s Empire of AI is 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“Empire of AI is a heroic work. Karen Hao braved many obstacles with gritty determination as she traveled the yellow brick road to the Oz of the storied corporation OpenAI to bring us this work of essential public education. Her courage was rewarded with truth. Altman, a cunning young man with outsized ambition and excellent ‘people skills,’ condemned the world to the digital violence of an approach to ‘artificial intelligence’ that can only exist by devouring the totality of the world’s information and then the world itself. Mr. Altman was no wizard, and the seers of our digital future had little vision beyond their own baseless rhetoric and the billions of dollars from greedy or guileless investors. Hao is a gifted journalist and a deep thinker who reveals the historical significance and societal consequences of Silicon Valley’s AI spectacle, even as she meticulously documents a company and its leader hellbent on getting there first with no idea where they are going. If you think the digital future is safe in the hands of brilliant scientists, smart investors, and earnest political leaders, read this book and think again.” —Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

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, a program training thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI. She was formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal covering American and Chinese tech companies and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. Her work is regularly taught in universities and cited by governments. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American Humanist Media Award and American Society of Magazine Editors NEXT Award for Journalists Under 30. She received her bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from MIT.