Empire of AI - Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

From a brilliant longtime AI insider granted intimate access to the world of Sam Altman and 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 longtime AI expert Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI, five years ago, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, first for the
Spoiler alert: they 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. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within Open AI and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact last year with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing by the Open AI board just as he seemed at the top of the world, and then the board’s ignominious retreat and Altman’s triumphant return. The true story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is one of the great tales of corporate hubris and dysfunction for the highest of stakes. But this isn’t just a tale of a single company and its team, however fascinating they are. The g forces pressing down on this crew are deforming the judgement 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 also shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction at scale grind on. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down on the darkling plain where the real suffering happens at impact,

Product details

• Authors: Karen Hao
• Publisher: Penguin Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 15.07.2025
• EAN: 9780593657508
• ISBN: 978-0-593-65750-8
• No. of pages: 496
• Dimensions: 166 mm x 243 mm x 43 mm
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Technology > General, dictionaries; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Social Aspects, Colonialism & imperialism, International Economics, Colonialism and imperialism, Impact of science & technology on society, Impact of science and technology on society, National liberation & independence, post-colonialism, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / International / Economics & Trade, Decolonisation and postcolonial studies