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

Come join Triangle Common Good in reading Karen Hao's Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI.

Karen Hao was one of the first journalists to cover OpenAI, writing a profile in 2020 for MIT Tech Review that would result in the company refusing to officially talk to her for three years. She is presently the leader of The AI Spotlight Series, a program with the Pulitzer Center that trains journalists on how to cover AI. Previously she was a senior AI editor at MIT Technology Review, Wall Street Journal correspondent, and fellow at Harvard and MIT.

Empire of AI is the culmination of her behind-the-scenes reporting on OpenAI since their inception and covers the leadership decisions and ideology involved in the operation of OpenAI and the AI industry more broadly. The book has gained a lot of positive attention since its release in May, including praise from a variety of outlets and individuals involved in covering the AI space.

Although we have talked about the philosophical limits of AI, and situated it in the history of labor automation, we have not begun to dig fully into the political, social, and material impacts of AI on our society right now. This will be a chance to start to talk about that.

Hao's 2020 Article on OpenAI
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/17/844721/ai-openai-moonshot-elon-musk-sam-altman-greg-brockman-messy-secretive-reality/

Interview between Hao and Brian Merchant (author of our prior read, Blood in the Machine)
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/dismantling-the-empire-of-ai-with

New York Times Review
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/books/review/empire-of-ai-karen-hao-the-optimist-keach-hagey.html