Post by Werner Bogula

My review of "Empire of AI" by Karen Hao I used a workation at the Baltic Sea to finish Karen Hao’s book "Empire of AI", read my review below...   This is not another piece of “fast food” tech journalism. It’s investigative tech storytelling at its best. Hao, renowned journalist and longtime MIT Technology Review contributor, takes us deep into the rise of OpenAI — and the rise, fall, and rise of Sam Altman — weaving it all into a narrative that feels at times like Game of Thrones for the tech world. She conducted over 300 interviews across the globe: with Silicon Valley insiders, whistleblowers and click workers from the fringe of the empire. The result is a meticulously researched account of how OpenAI grew from an idealistic non-profit into a trillion-dollar empire — and at what human, ethical, and ecological cost. Her central thesis: AI is not just a technology. It’s an empire — one that extracts resources, rewrites rules, and reshapes the world much like the colonial powers of the past. Hao also depicts a detailed tableau of the people who built this empire: From the well-known power figures of Silicon Valley, with Sam Altman front and center, down to the clickworkers who have to clean up the mess. I can recommend it to anyone who works in AI and wants to risk a view behind the front end of the nice and always friendly chatbot #ChatGPT. The book also reflects on the ethical controversy inside OpenAI that accompanied the development of ChatGPT, so we as developers of conversational AI at PINKTUM can learn from the big guys how to cope with such complicated matters. Reading AI books for the Artificial Intelligence Center Hamburg (ARIC) on a workation for PINKTUM, so you don't have to.