Free State with Joe Brolly and Dion Fanning Best of Free State - How AI colonised the planet. With Karen Hao
Dec 30, 2025
Karen Hao, a journalist and author of 'Empire of AI,' dives into the imperial nature of artificial intelligence. She argues that AI's development mimics historical empires, exploiting resources and communities, particularly in Ireland. Hao critiques the distraction of the doomer vs. boomer debate and highlights the environmental impact of data centers. She details how marketing defined AI's trajectory and calls for resistance against its unchecked expansion, urging for policies that prioritize community rights and agency over automated dominance.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Scale Drives The Wrong Kind Of AI
- Generative AGI pursuit requires massive scale and resources that create unique harms.
- Task-specific AIs like DeepMind's AlphaFold deliver big benefits without the same computational costs.
AI As A New Form Of Empire
- AI development mirrors historical empires in resource capture, labour exploitation and knowledge monopolies.
- The 'civilizing mission' framing legitimizes dispossession while concentrating benefits at the top.
Scaling Was A Strategic Choice
- OpenAI chose to escalate existing techniques by sheer scale, building unprecedented supercomputers for GPT-3.
- That jump forced vast, opaque data scraping and an industry-wide replication race with heavy costs.