From a brilliant longtime AI insider granted intimate access to the world of Sam Altman and OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy

When longtime AI expert Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI, five years ago, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, first for the <MIT Technology Review<, then the <Wall Street Journal<, and now for the <Atlantic<, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that breakthrough success requires an almost unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the &ldquo;compute&rdquo; power of scarce high-end chips and the processing capacity to compile and drive these massive large language model data sets, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground &ldquo;cleaning up&rdquo; the data for sweatshop wages throughout the global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. Somewhere near you, a server farm is being built.&nbsp; he truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play of this great game. How would Sam Altman and OpenAI resist such Faustian temptations?

Spoiler alert: they didn&rsquo;t. Armed with Microsoft&rsquo;s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history.&nbsp;All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within Open AI and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact last year with the story that shocked the entire tech industry&mdash;Altman&rsquo;s sudden firing by the Open AI board just as he seemed at the top of the world, and then the board&rsquo;s ignominious retreat and Altman&rsquo;s triumphant return. The true story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is one of the great tales of corporate hubris and dysfunction for the highest of stakes. But this isn&rsquo;t just a tale of a single company and its team, however fascinating they are. The g forces pressing down on this crew are deforming the judgement of everyone else too&mdash;as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they&rsquo;re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao also shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction at scale grind on. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down on the darkling plain where the real suffering happens at impact, <Empire of AI< is the book we need to pierce the veil and bring the stakes into sharp focus....

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Karen Hao

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A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • A New York Times Bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, NYPL Helen Bernstein Award, Whiting Award, Nautilus Book Award, and Porchlight Business Book Award

“A bestselling page-turner that has made waves not just in Silicon Valley but around the world . . . With Empire of AI, Hao is fundamentally shaping many people’s perceptions and understanding of the company at the center of the AI revolution.” —TIME Magazine, “TIME100 AI 2025”

“Excellent and deeply reported.” —Tim Wu, The New York Times

**“Startling and intensely researched . . . an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us.” —*Vulture

From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of the tech arms race in history that is reshaping the planet in real time*

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined, the organization was meant to act as a check against more purely mercantile forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao wrestled with that question. Increasingly, she realized that this disruptive sector’s vision of success requires an unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. We have entered a new age of empire where only a handful of globally scaled companies can enter the field of play.

Armed with billions, pushing on trillions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained deep sourcing within the company and the industry, keeping in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes of what happened is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company. As Hao shows through intrepid global reporting, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. An astonishing eyewitness view from both the command capsule of the new economy and where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.

Leseprobe
Prologue

A Run for the Throne

On Friday, November 17, 2023, around noon Pacific time, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Silicon Valley's golden boy, avatar of the generative AI revolution, logged on to a Google Meet to see four of his five board members staring at him.

From his video square, board member Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist, was brief: Altman was being fired. The announcement would go out momentarily.

Altman was in his room at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas to attend the city's first Formula One race in a generation, a star-studded affair with guests from Rihanna to David Beckham. The trip was a short reprieve in the middle of the punishing travel schedule he had maintained ever since the company released ChatGPT about a year earlier. For a moment, he was too stunned to speak. He looked away as he sought to regain his composure. As the conversation continued, he tried in his characteristic way to smooth things over.

"How can I help?" he asked.

The board told him to support the interim chief executive they had selected, Mira Murati, who had been serving as his chief technology officer. Altman, still confused and wondering whether this was a bad dream, acquiesced.

Minutes later, Sutskever sent another Google Meet link to Greg Brockman, OpenAI's president and a close ally to Altman who had been the only board member missing from the previous meeting. Sutskever told Brockman he would no longer be on the board but would retain his role at the company.

The public announcement went up soon thereafter. "Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The board no longer has confidence in his …