Review of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao (Penguin Press, 2025)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is quite possibly the most hyped technology in history. For well over half a century, the potential for AI to replace most or all human skills has crisscrossed in the public imagination between sci-fi fantasy and scientific mission.
From the predictive AI of the 2000s that brought us search engines and apps, to the generative AI of the 2020s that is bringing us chatbots and deepfakes, every iteration of AI is apparently one more leap toward the summit of human-comparable AI, or what is now widely termed Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
The strength of Karen Hao’s detailed analysis of America’s AI industry, Empire of AI, is that her relentlessly grounded approach refuses to play the game of the AI hype merchants. Hao makes a convincing case that it is wrong to focus on hypotheticals about the future of AI when its present incarnation is fraught with so many problems. She also stresses that exaggerated “doomer” and “boomer” perspectives on what is coming down the line both end up helping the titans of the industry to build a present and future for AI that best serves their interests.
Moreover, AI is a process, not a destination. The AI we have today is itself the product of path dependencies based on the ideologies, infrastructure, and IPs that dominate in Silicon Valley. As such, AI is being routed down a highly oligopolistic developmental path, one that is designed deliberately to minimize market competition and concentrate power in the hands of a very small number of American corporate executives.
However, the future of AI remains contested territory….
Auteur: Ben Wray
