AI’s Imperial Agenda

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Jan 2, 2026

In a compelling conversation, tech reporter Karen Hao unveils the alarming implications of AI expansion. With her background in investigative journalism, she draws parallels between AI companies and historical empires, emphasizing labor exploitation and environmental costs. Hao critiques the rapid growth of AI infrastructure, highlighting its negative impacts on vulnerable communities. She challenges the narrative of AI's utopian promises, warning that without proper regulations, this may lead to growing inequality and potential industry collapse.

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INSIGHT

OpenAI Shaped Modern AI

OpenAI's choices shaped the public image of modern AI and popularized large, consumptive models.
Karen Hao traced today's AI landscape through OpenAI's decisions to show systemic effects.

INSIGHT

AI Mirrors Colonial Patterns

Hao identifies four parallels between AI firms and colonial empires: resource extraction, labor exploitation, information control, and moral narratives.
These parallels explain how companies accumulate power without fair distribution.

INSIGHT

Speed Is A Key Difference

The pace of AI empire-building is unprecedented, moving at the speed of bits rather than ships.
Companies are constructing massive infrastructure quickly and persuading governments to permit it.

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After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched ChatGPT in 2022, the race for dominance in the field of artificial intelligence hit warp speed. Silicon Valley has poured billions of dollars into developing AI, building data centers, and promising a future free from the chains of unfulfilling work across the globe.

But in “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” tech reporter Karen Hao pulls back the curtain, unveiling the human and environmental cost of artificial intelligence and the colonial ambitions undergirding Silicon Valley's efforts to fuel the rise of AI.

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington speaks to Hao about her book and the dawn of the AI empire. “Empires similarly consolidate a lot of economic might by exploiting extraordinary amounts of labor and not actually paying that labor sufficiently or at all,” says Hao. “So that's how they are able to amass wealth — because they're not actually distributing it.”

“The speed at which they're constructing the infrastructure for training and deploying their AI models” is what shocks Hao the most, as “this infrastructure is actually not technically necessary, and ... somehow the companies have effectively convinced the public and governments that it is. And therefore there's been a lot of complicity in allowing these companies to continue building these projects.”

“They have effectively been able to use this narrative of [artificial general intelligence] to accrue more capital, land, energy, water, data. They've been able to accrue more resources — and critical resources — than pretty much anyone in history,” Hao says, warning of "the complete aggressive and reckless” growth of AI infrastructure, but stresses that none of this is inevitable. “There is a very clear path for how to unlock the benefits of AI without accepting the colossal cost of it.”

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