Big Ideas Empire of AI — Karen Hao goes inside the reckless race for total world domination
Nov 6, 2025
Karen Hao, an award-winning technology journalist and author of "Empire of AI," joins lawyer and AI governance adviser Kobe Lyons for an insightful conversation. They explore how AI's rapid evolution is tied to colonial practices and the environmental toll of tech development. Hao critiques the industry's narrative on productivity and discusses the troubling exploitation of workers in data labeling. They also highlight community-driven models promoting ethical AI, proposing a shift to purpose-driven technologies that prioritize human needs over corporate gain.
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Mission Drift To Empire Building
- OpenAI shifted from a public-benefit mission to corporate empire-building centered on scaling compute and data.
- This narrative justifies resource grabs and deregulation while masking alternatives and harms.
Scaling Laws Are A Convenience Narrative
- Scaling laws became a self-fulfilling rationale: more data and compute supposedly yields progress.
- Karen Hao argues these are empirical observations, not physics, but are used to demand unlimited resources.
Data Labelers Fuel AI At Great Cost
- AI capabilities rely on vast human labour: tens of thousands of data labelers, mostly in the global South.
- Companies set up platforms in crisis-affected countries, exploiting economic desperation to cut costs.
