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,

About the author

Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. She leads the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series, a program training journalists around the world on how to cover AI, and sits on the AI advisory board of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She was formerly a foreign correspondent covering China’s technology industry for the Wall Street Journal 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 National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30. She received her B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.

Summary

A New York Times Notable Book • An Instant New York Times Bestseller • One of Smithsonian's Top 10 Science Books of the Year

“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”

“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

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.

Product details

• Authors: Karen Hao
• Publisher: Penguin Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.07.2025
• EAN: 9798217060481
• ISBN: 9798217060481
• No. of pages: 496
• Dimensions: 156 mm x 235 mm x 25 mm
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > IT, data processing > IT; Social sciences, law, business > Business; 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