Empire of AI

Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

De: Karen Hao

Narrado por: Karen Hao

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

“Excellent and deeply reported.”—Tim Wu, The New York Times

“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

“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

From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.

©2025 Karen Hao (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“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

“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

Necessary.

Karen Hao has real access to insiders in an industry that makes lofty claims that are under scrutinized, despite its impact on our material and social world.

It's not that difficult to see the greed behind the promise.

Good insight, occasionally too much detail. maybe the detail has helped for future understanding, but it could get a bit dense.

Phenomena

A great under the hood look at AI and the most powerful players in the delusional race to superiority

Answers so many questions

This book gave more answers to the many questions left unanswered after Sam’s random firing and reinstatement, Annie’s accusations of Sam’s abuse, the split and formation of Anthropic, Ilya’s departure etc.

Can tell it was well researched and Karen Hao has been able to form good relations with people involved with the matter to reveal insider perspectives.

Very valuable counter perspective to OpenAI marketing, helped me see how we can develop AI for broadly useful and non-exploitative uses with less compute and resources

Incredible reporting

Incredible about of insight, analysis, and textured detail of the story of openai and the rise of AI.

Engaging and well documented

By following the case of one of the most iconic companies in the field of AI, the author reflects and offers a critical point of view about the side effects that most AI companies cause to individuals due to the decisions they take in order to win the race towards AGI.
In general, the book is really well written and feels very fluid through out the chapters. The author does a remarkable work referencing and highlighting relevant research, as well as, social issues caused by decisions and practices in how AI companies develop their technology.

Dark Side of the Moon shot

Karen’s, as it turns out evidently do do their homework. Karen probes every nook and cranny of the burgeoning AI Empire as an excellent WSJournalist. But just like nuclear, the horse is out of the barn. I have less concerns with Ai itself than with bad humans. In any event, with the deep minds behind Ai, make no mistake it is happening, and I don’t see the unemployables in congress figuring things out any time soon when the Trump clown car is using chat gpt to formulate tariffs.

Vital insight into the A I industry

Super well researched and written. Documents, extensively for human environmental and spiritual cost of the AI industry in general and Open AI in particular. Must read if you want to understand what it takes to deliver those little ChatGPT responses.

Great resource! A must read on this subject!!

As a visual artist very active in the scene of new media, this is a must listen/read book. I appreciated the investigative style of this book (don’t recall reading a book written by a journalist) for I felt myself so many times right in front of the many characters mentioned in research. The book is a slow motion review of the many layers of this technology and how it became about what we’re actually seeing today—eye opening, concerning, and promising IF new format considers the important implications: community and environment impact. Hilly recommended for college students …!it would be a great reading, especially if you are teaching a class on new tech.

Way too much woke political fluff

I listened to this book wanting to understand the story behind OpenAI's rise, how they arrived at the chatGPT moment, the truth behind all the talent exodus, and what Sama is really like (Elon hates this guy, why?).

The book delivers and is well researched there.

if this is what you care about, skip every other chapters.

Those chapters talk about the dark side of AI development, e.g. how data labelers get traumatized by labeling harmful content, and how local governments ignore their constituents' livelihood to secure data center investments (ex, why are so many data centers in Arizona?!). These are fascinating and well researched issues.

Unfortunately, the author also force feed you her interpretation about how the above means companies working on AI are somehow evil, capitalism is bad, all of the global south's problems are the west and colonialism 's fault, and it's totally alarmist to think Chinese AGI threat doesn't exist (with no justification on this one at all). And while the main storyline is delivered through straight forward and concise language, these political opinions are delivered through long winded and florid languages that reminds me of LOTR. The audio narration also feels very performative (yes go ahead and pronounce all the obscure foreign names in the exact accent for English audiences, because that's going to help them remember who's who..).

For example, data labeling became a way for Venezuelans to make a living when their government essentially collapsed -- but somehow the author interprets it as exploitation, discounting the alternative of no better economic opportunities..

The book can be much better if the author presented the stories and researched issues both matter of factly, raise her perceived issues (and there are many valid ones, the most fascinating one being this AI race may not be actually inevitable if not for OpenAI) at the end of each chapter as thought provoking questions, and let the readers decide for themselves.