Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
Karen Hao
May 2025 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Karen Hao
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11 reviews
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17 hr 50 min
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A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • A New York Times Bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, NYPL Helen Bernstein Award, Whiting Award, Nautilus Book Award, and Porchlight Business Book Award
“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 the tech arms race in history that is reshaping the planet in real time
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined, the organization was meant to act as a check against more purely mercantile forces. What could go wrong?
Over time, Hao wrestled with that question. Increasingly, she realized that this disruptive sector’s vision of success requires an 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. We have entered a new age of empire where only a handful of globally scaled companies can enter the field of play.
Armed with billions, pushing on trillions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained deep sourcing within the company and the industry, keeping in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes of what happened is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company. As Hao shows through intrepid global reporting, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. An astonishing eyewitness view from both the command capsule of the new economy and where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.
“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 the tech arms race in history that is reshaping the planet in real time
When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined, the organization was meant to act as a check against more purely mercantile forces. What could go wrong?
Over time, Hao wrestled with that question. Increasingly, she realized that this disruptive sector’s vision of success requires an 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. We have entered a new age of empire where only a handful of globally scaled companies can enter the field of play.
Armed with billions, pushing on trillions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained deep sourcing within the company and the industry, keeping in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes of what happened is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company. As Hao shows through intrepid global reporting, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. An astonishing eyewitness view from both the command capsule of the new economy and where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.
A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • A New York Times Bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, NYPL Helen Bernstein Award, Whiting Award, Naut...
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Ratings and reviews
11 reviews
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October 11, 2025
The book is a difficult read due to the author's apparent bias against Sam Altman. While it contains interesting historical accounts of OpenAI's start, it is overwhelmingly critical of Altman, often without backing statements, especially concerning his private life. The author inserts too much "fluff" and draws irrelevant parallels (e.g., personal life vs. CEO role). The long-winded nature seems designed purely to justify the critical stance.
Nicole Fields
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March 2, 2026
like the first person says it's difficult to read that being said to see the fear of Elon musk knowing how intelligent AI can become and what he knows about it and what he has kept himself to this point!
Leo Allen
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October 7, 2025
A great, thorough examination of the AI industry and its impacts that many may be unaware of.
About the author
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.
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 for...
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