Books by Karen Hao

Karen Hao is a tech journalist who has spent seven years covering artificial intelligence and AI colonialism. She reported on OpenAI for MIT Technology Review for two years before the release of ChatGPT. Her book 'Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI', released May 20, 2025 and drawn from interviews with around 260 people, won the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and the 2026 New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.

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Empire of AI

Karen Hao

Behind ChatGPT's polished interface lies a story of scraped data, exploited workers, drained aquifers, and concentrated power. Empire of AI traces how OpenAI transformed from a nonprofit promising to save humanity into a corporate empire — and how a small group of billionaires made decisions that affect everyone on Earth without asking anyone.

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