If you’ve ever felt like artificial intelligence is everywhere—but no one’s really explaining what it is or where it’s taking us—Karen Hao’s new book, Empire of AI, might just be your reality check.
Hao, a former MIT-trained mechanical engineer turned investigative journalist, has spent years covering AI for publications like MIT Technology Review and The Wall Street Journal. In Empire of AI, she pulls from over 300 interviews with AI insiders to expose how today’s tech titans are reshaping the world—with very little resistance.
Here’s what you need to know.
“AI” Means Everything and Nothing
First, Hao breaks down the myth of AI itself. Turns out, the term “artificial intelligence” is so vague it’s basically meaningless. As Hao explains in her interview on Your Undivided Attention, AI is a “suitcase word”—people cram it with whatever they want. It might refer to chatbots like ChatGPT, algorithms that predict what Netflix show you’ll binge next, or massive deep learning systems trained on the internet.
This imprecision is a feature, not a bug. Politicians, companies, and media use “AI” to hype vague innovations, secure funding, and pass ambiguous policies. Hao likens it to talking about “transportation” without specifying whether you mean a bicycle or a Boeing 747.
The Tech Industry’s Religious Obsession with AGI
Underneath the business strategies is something more intense: ideology. The book explores how the pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—machines that match or exceed human thinking—has become a quasi-religious goal for Silicon Valley elites.
Even though most experts agree AGI is nowhere near reality, the belief in it drives massive funding and influences corporate strategy. Investors and founders treat it as a civilizational leap—something worth betting the planet on.
AI Is an Environmental Beast
What most people don’t realize is that training and running AI systems requires an enormous amount of power and water. Hao cites a McKinsey report projecting that by 2030, data centers could use as much electricity as half of the UK’s annual energy consumption.
And it’s not just about the power grid. These same data centers guzzle potable water for cooling, often in drought-prone regions like the U.S. Southwest and Uruguay. The climate footprint of AI is massive—and growing.
The Altman Effect: OpenAI’s Master Tactician
Hao doesn’t hold back when it comes to analyzing the personalities shaping AI. One major figure? Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
She describes him as a master manipulator—a charismatic figure who’s not necessarily a technical genius but excels at vision casting, recruiting talent, and raising capital. He’s propelled OpenAI from a nonprofit idealist project into a $300 billion tech behemoth, partly by navigating shifting goals and narratives with remarkable skill.
Whether that’s inspiring or alarming is up to you.
The New Digital Colonialism
One of Hao’s most compelling insights is the global supply chain behind AI—and how much it resembles historic colonialism.
Just like the British East India Company extracted labor and resources from the Global South, today’s AI giants outsource content moderation, data labeling, and annotation work to low-wage workers in countries like Kenya and Colombia. TIME Magazine and Rest of World have reported extensively on the harsh, exploitative conditions these workers face.
Behind every sleek app or chatbot is an invisible layer of labor—and it’s often underpaid, overworked, and traumatized.
The Democratic Deficit
One of Hao’s biggest warnings is about unchecked corporate power. Tech companies are now shaping laws, regulations, and even foreign policy—largely without oversight. During the Trump administration, attempts to deregulate AI at the federal level gave companies even more space to define their own ethical boundaries.
This lack of democratic input is dangerous. If AI companies become the new empires, they’ll wield power that no one voted for, backed by data no one voluntarily gave up.
Resistance Is Real—and It Works
But there’s hope. Hao ends with a call to action, spotlighting communities pushing back:
- Activists in Chile blocked Google from building a water-intensive data center in an already drought-stricken region (source).
- Artists are suing AI companies for using their work without permission (source).
- Local communities are demanding greater transparency and consent when it comes to how data and infrastructure are used.
The point? We don’t have to accept the tech elite’s version of the future. We can shape it ourselves.
Final Thoughts
Karen Hao’s Empire of AI is not just another tech book—it’s a much-needed intervention. She connects the hype, ideology, exploitation, and power consolidation happening behind the AI curtain—and shows us that the future of technology isn’t inevitable. It’s political. It’s human. And we all have a say in it.
If you want to understand what’s really going on in AI—and what’s at stake—this book should be on your shelf.
👉 Get the book
🎧 Listen to Karen Hao talk about it on the Center for Humane Tech’s podcast
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