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A New York Times Bestseller Right at Your Fingertips
“Outstanding and meticulously investigated.”—Tim Wu, The New York Times
“Surprising and thoroughly researched . . . a crucial narrative of how OpenAI and ChatGPT emerged and the perilous paths they may lead us down.”—Vulture
“Hao’s insight into OpenAI is remarkable, and she compellingly argues that we should concentrate less on A.I.’s supposed ‘sentience’ and more on its consequences for labor and the environment.”—Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker
From a brilliant, seasoned AI insider who has had close access to Sam Altman’s OpenAI from the outset, comes a revealing narrative of perhaps the most critical tech arms race in history, reshaping our world in real time from within the company driving the excitement.
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao initially began reporting on OpenAI in 2019, she believed they were the good actors. Established as a nonprofit with safety as its central mission, the organization was intended, as its leader Sam Altman claimed, to serve as a safeguard against more purely profit-driven and potentially hazardous forces. What could possibly go wrong?
As time passed, Hao found herself grappling more profoundly with that inquiry. She began to understand that the fundamental reality of this profoundly disruptive sector is that its vision of success depends on an almost unparalleled quantity of resources: the “compute” capabilities of high-end chips and the processing power required to develop massive large language models, the sheer volume of data needed to be gathered at scale, the workers “cleaning up” that data for meager wages across the Global South, and a genuinely alarming increase in energy and water consumption that underlies it all. The reality is we have stepped into a new and foreboding era of empire: only a few globally scaled corporations can realistically participate in this arena. Leading the charge with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist the temptations that come with such power?
Spoiler alert: they didn’t. With Microsoft’s financial backing, OpenAI is accelerating at a breathtaking pace, pursued by a select group of the most valuable companies in history—toward a destination that even they cannot articulate. Throughout this journey, Hao has retained her strong connections within the company and the industry, giving her intimate access to the story that astonished the entire tech world—Altman’s abrupt firing and triumphant reinstatement. The behind-the-scenes account of these events, disclosed here for the first time, reveals the true nature of those controlling this technology. However, this isn’t solely the tale of a single organization, no matter how intriguing it may be. The forces at play are influencing the judgment of everyone involved—an effect these powerful forces often exert. Raw power seeks the ideology to disguise itself; no one perceives themselves as the antagonist. In the interim, as Hao illustrates through fearless on-the-ground reporting worldwide, the colossal engines of extraction continue to churn. By incorporating perspectives from Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data workers, and Chilean water activists, Hao offers the most comprehensive portrayal of AI and its implications we’ve encountered so far, coupled with a sharp analysis of the direction we’re heading. A breathtaking firsthand look from both the helm of the emerging economy and the regions where the actual suffering occurs, *Empire of AI* cuts through the facade of an industry shaping our epoch.
