How To Be More Thoughtful About AI: A Book Review of Karen Hao’s New Empire of AI
Porn in the data, Bill Gates, and Koko the gorilla
Karen Hao’s (2025) Empire of AI covers the rise of OpenAI and its many political and social dimensions. The book begins with the fiasco at OpenAI over Sam Altman’s temporary firing. It ends by picking this thread up again, this time detailing potential reasons for his removal as CEO.
In between, the reader learns many things—how OpenAI got its data, the fallout between Elon Musk and Altman, how tagging data affected the lives of foreign workers in Venezuela and Kenya, OpenAI’s relationship with Bill Gates and Microsoft, the environmental impacts of data centers, Sam Altman’s appreciation of The Mind of Napoleon, effective altruism versus effective accelerationism, and more.
Apparently, actor Andrew Garfield was (or is) reading Hao’s book in preparation for his role as Sam Altman in the upcoming film Artificial, which Wikipedia labels as a “biographical comedy drama.”
After reading Hao, I’m not quite sure how this movie is going to be framed as a comedy. Just look at that book cover (above). But whatever.
The book has clear political assumptions and implications. In many ways, Hao has the same ideological bent as many left-wing academics. The metaphor of an “Empire” is one that she runs with, and it has clear colonial/postcolonial resonances.
Yet, even if you’re conservative, she still has a lot of valuable things to say. You can’t read this book and think with Ted Cruz that deregulation of the AI industry is a good idea.
Ergo, I recommend this book, and I’m grateful that Hao wrote it.
Read it if you want to get smarter about the political and social implications of AI. In today’s post, I’ll rehearse some of the more memorable details from it.