The Hidden Hierarchy of AI Development

In his New York Times review of the book, Columbia Law School professor and former White House official Tim Wu calls journalist Karen Hao’s new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, “a corrective to tech journalism that rarely leaves Silicon Valley.”

Hao has appeared on this podcast before, to help us understand how the business model of social media platforms incentivizes the deterioration of information ecosystems, the series of events around OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s abrupt firing in 2023, and the furor around the launch of DeepSeek last year. This week, Justin Hendrix spoke with Hao about the book, and what she imagines for the future.