Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination By Karen Hao

A NEW YORK TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER | WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD 2025

When longtime AI expert and journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she believed they were the good guys. Founded as a noble nonprofit with safety firmly enshrined as its core mission, it was meant—as leader Sam Altman proclaimed—to act as an ethical check against pure market forces.

But as Hao reveals in this eye-opening, deeply reported exposé, the reality of the AI revolution is far darker. The industry demands an unprecedented concentration of scarce resources: massive clusters of high-end chips, staggering volumes of data scraped at scale, marginalized workers in the Global South cleaning data for sweatshop wages, and a truly alarming spike in water and energy consumption. We have officially entered a dangerous new age of corporate empire, with OpenAI setting a breakneck, reckless pace while tech giants chase total domination. Backed by unparalleled access to insiders close to Sam Altman, Empire of AI is an exhilarating and alarming look at the human, environmental, and societal cost of the technology reshaping our planet.

Why this book is a must-have:

• Award-Winning Journalism: Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 2025, longlisted for the FT & Schroders Business Book of the Year, and shortlisted for Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

• Unrivaled Insider Access: Written by an elite AI journalist who has tracked the meteoric rise of OpenAI from the inside out since 2019.

• Urgent & Eye-Opening: Exposes the hidden human labor, ecological tolls, and geopolitical high-stakes driving the global tech arms race.

• Essential Non-Fiction: A must-read for tech professionals, policy-makers, and anyone seeking to understand the true cost of artificial intelligence.

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