Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI

Author: Karen Hao Year: 2024 Genre: Artificial Intelligence

About This Book

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI is a comprehensive exploration of how artificial intelligence is reshaping our world and the profound implications for society. Written by Karen Hao, a journalist who has extensively covered AI and technology, this book provides an insightful perspective on the development and deployment of AI technologies, with a particular focus on OpenAI and Sam Altman’s vision.

Key Insights

• Inside OpenAI’s rise: A reported narrative on leadership, strategy shifts, and the tension between research ideals and commercial realities.
• Safety vs speed: How competition, funding, and market share pressures shape choices about deployment, alignment, and governance.
• Culture and power: The role of personality, board dynamics, and investor influence in steering frontier AI.
• Policy and PR: How narratives about existential risk, regulation, and openness/closedness are crafted and contested.
• Impact on the ecosystem: Effects on researchers, startups, and the open-source community as capabilities centralise.

Why I Recommend It

Hao’s journalism-first approach provides context you won’t get from technical papers or press releases. It’s a grounded account of how incentives, personalities, and power shape AI—useful for technologists, policy-makers, and leaders alike.

Read it to understand not just what OpenAI builds, but why those decisions are made—and what that means for the broader AI landscape.