Empire of AI by Karen Hao – book review

“One of the good guys.” That’s what award-winning AI journalist Karen Hao believed about OpenAI, when she first began covering the tech giant in 2019. After all, this was a company apparently founded with safety and transparency at its very core. 

But – spoilers! – in true newshound tradition, as she dug deeper, she’d uncover a relentless tech race fuelled by massive computing power demanding “an obscene amount of funding”, vast troves of data cleaned by low-paid workers in the global south – and some truly alarming environmental costs.

Her new exposé, Empire of AI (“an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us”, says Vulture) tugs back the curtain on one of the world’s most powerful and secretive AI companies, revealing a story far more complex and troubling than its early reputation as a benevolent nonprofit. 

Backed by Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is portrayed as a leader in this new “age of empire” (and the links between rapacious, historical colonialism and its latter-day incarnation are made clear), in which only a few giant companies can compete. As Hao vividly describes, it’s a culture driven by a fundamental philosophy– the need to be first or perish – setting in motion all of OpenAI’s actions and their far reaching consequences. 

Not least, the environmental cost: as Open AI co-founder Ilya Sutskever warns, “I think that it’s fairly likely that it will not take too long of a time for the entire surface of the Earth to become covered with data centres and power stations.”

Emotional rollercoaster

Empire of AI captures the emotional rollercoaster among OpenAI employees who oscillate between hope and fear – and a near-religious fervour, about artificial general intelligence (AGI). Hao quotes workers “with wide-eyed wonder” dreaming of utopia. As she told Mashable, “I spoke to people with wide-eyed wonder when they were talking about how it would bring utopia. Someone said, ‘We’re going to reach AGI and then, game over, like, the world will be perfect.’ 

And for Hao, this intense faith, serves as a coping mechanism: “The amount of power to influence the world is so profound that I think they start to need religion; some kind of belief system or value system to hold on to... Because you feel so inadequate otherwise, having all that responsibility.” 

And Hao paints a stark picture of how OpenAI’s mission has shifted – from openness to secrecy under the crushing pressure of competition and capital. The levels of corporate opacity, she argues, have become so extreme that even basic facts about these technologies – such as their energy use or data sources – are now obscured. When even Elon Musk is bluntly criticising this change (“OpenAI should be more open imo”), you may have a problem.

“Fair criticism” said Open AI CEO Sam Altman.

Hao’s reporting also suggests that OpenAI’s Silicon Valley–centric worldview often limits its actual usefulness for people outside that rarefied bubble. These models are built to reflect the needs and experiences of those who create them, but the farther someone’s life is from that context, the more likely the technology is to fail them. Who really benefits from AI – and who’s excluded or harmed?

Because if Empire of AI makes one thing clear, it’s that OpenAI’s influence doesn’t stop at ChatGPT – it stretches right across the globe, and the global south is paying the price. As Hao reveals, data-hungry engines powering artificial intelligence are built on the hidden labour of low-paid workers in Kenya, the Philippines, and Venezuela.

These workers, often tasked with the distressing work of moderating toxic content or cleaning data, are essential to the development of today’s AI – but remain poorly paid, traumatised, and largely invisible: “Electronic colonialism.”

AI energy demands

And while data centres demand huge amounts of energy and water, increasingly, it’s poorer communities – those with cheap land and weak environmental protections – who are bearing the brunt, facing depleted water sources, increased energy demands, noise pollution and land displacement. By 2030, it’s estimated AI data centres could consume up to 8% of US power and billions of gallons of water annually.

The book also chronicles dramatic internal events, such as the 2023 board coup that briefly ousted Altman before his swift return, shedding light on the real people behind the AI revolution and their often fraught motivations. As Hao told Mashable, some employees told her, in voices “quivering with fear”, that they worried AGI could destroy humanity.

This is a timely, hugely cautionary tale about unchecked technological ambition, concentration of power, and the erosion of transparency – the kind of forces that threaten democratic norms and the planet itself. Simply, for anyone looking to understand the promises, perils, and politics behind the AI revolution, it’s essential reading.

Empire of AI by Karen Hao is published by Penguin Books.

Ali Catterall is an award-winning writer, journalist and filmmaker whose writing has featured in the Guardian, Time Out, GQ, Film4, Word magazine and the Big Issue, among many others. Ali is also the writer and director of the 2023 film Scala!!!

More book reviews by Ali Catterall

Ben Ambridge reveals the power of narrative in Stories of Your Life
How to Be Awake by Heather Darwall-Smith
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams