When journalist Karen Hao first profiled OpenAI in 2020, it was a little-known startup. Five years and one very popular chatbot later, the company has transformed into a dominant force in the fast-expanding AI sector — one Hao likens to a “modern-day colonial world order” in her new book, “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.”
Hao tells Reuters this isn’t a comparison she made lightly. Drawing on years of reporting in Silicon Valley and further afield to countries where generative AI’s impact is perhaps most acutely felt — from Kenya, where OpenAI reportedly outsourced workers to annotate data for as little as $2 per hour, to Chile, where AI data centers threaten the country’s precious water resources — she makes the case that, like empires of old, AI firms are building their wealth off of resource extraction and labor exploitation. This critique stands in stark contrast to the vision promoted by industry leaders like Altman (who declined to participate in Hao’s book), who portray AI as a tool for human advancement — from boosting productivity to improving healthcare. Empires, Hao contends, cloaked their conquests in the language of progress too.
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Reuters: Can you tell us how you came to the AI beat?
Karen Hao: I studied mechanical engineering at MIT, and I originally thought I was going to work in the tech industry. But I quickly realized once I went to Silicon Valley that it was not necessarily the place I wanted to stay because the incentive structures made it such that it was really hard to develop technology in the public interest. Ultimately, the things I was interested in — like building technology that facilitates sustainability and creates a more sustainable and equitable future — were not things that were profitable endeavors. So I went into journalism to cover the issues that I cared about and ultimately started covering tech and AI.
That work has culminated in your new book “Empire of AI.” What story were you hoping to tell?
Once I started covering AI, I realized that it was a microcosm of all of the things that I wanted to explore: how technology affects society, how people interface with it, the incentives (and) misaligned incentives within Silicon Valley. I was very lucky in getting to observe AI and also OpenAI before everyone had their ChatGPT moment, and I wanted to add more context to that moment that everyone experienced and show them this technology comes from a specific place. It comes from a specific group of people and to understand its trajectory and how it’s going to impact us in the future. And, in fact, the human choices that have shaped ChatGPT and Generative AI today (are) something that we should be alarmed by and we collectively have a role to play in starting to shape technology.
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