If I could make everyone in my life read any one book, it would be Empire of AI by Karen Hao. Maybe then they’d stop suggesting I use AI for things.
I mean I say that, but actually, most people in my life already understand the problems with AI. Surround yourself with writers and artists, and you’ll surround yourself with people who hate the plagiarism machine. It’s mostly out in the professional world that I run into people who don’t seem to care about IP theft, environmental impacts, or just how often these tools are downright wrong.
Empire of AI is about the rise of OpenAI, although along the way it touches on important theories of artificial intelligence, the effective altruism movement (for more on how I feel about that, see my review of Moral Ambition), and the backgrounds of major players in the industry, especially Sam Altman.
Don’t read this book if you don’t want to get mad. Hao shines a light on all the dark corners of the AI industry, especially its impact on developing nations.
What annoys me the most about the subject of this book is how so many people decided the biggest existential threat to humanity was the potential rise of a malicious AI, so they needed to be the first ones to make AI, so it wouldn’t turn evil. It all ends up feeling like “The only defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” These guys have big Main Character Energy.
In the meantime, their work accelerates climate change, heightens global inequality, and entrenches existing biases.
Imagine if the money that was being invested into OpenAI, Anthropic, and all the AI tools being shoved into every tool you use (including the platform I write this blog on, and the platform I read my books through), was being put towards actual current issues, like poverty or illness or, you know, climate change.
But these guys don’t care about problems that impact the poor. They care about the fact that a rogue killer AI could hurt the people who really matter: tech billionaires.
This wasn’t a perfect book. It’s really long, and I felt some time could have been saved by doing away with some of the biographical details. I want to make this very clear: I could not possibly care less about where or how Sam Altman’s parents met. It’s not germane to the story. I don’t feel like I needed as much detail as I got about his school days, either. I’m here to learn about the evils of AI, not the mundane origins of the evil mastermind.
That said, there was one biographical fact I wanted to highlight: Altman apparently showed a real talent for writing in school and had teachers who hoped he’d make a career out of it. But he decided that the world didn’t need yet another novel, and besides, he couldn’t get rich writing like he could as a tech investor/entrepreneur. So perhaps the real take-away from this book should have been that if we hadn’t spent the past century or so undermining the value of the arts and the ability to make a good living in a creative career, maybe we wouldn’t have so many tech bros desperately trying to shove AI into everything.
Empire of AI is almost 500 pages long, or 18 hours in audio. It’s hard to convince anyone other than an avid reader to read a book that long, and even more so to convince them to dedicate that much time to learning that something they like actually sucks. So this book is preaching to the choir. It’s probably not going to reach the people who need it the most, but hopefully a few people who are on the fence will read it and be swayed over to the right side.
CWs and TWs: Touches on some pretty disturbing content reviewed by content moderators and created by users, including child sexual abuse materials. Also discusses allegations that Altman sexually abused his sister as a minor.
Source and Format: I borrowed the audiobook from Timberland Regional Library.
Reading Challenge Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): On Power and Corruption. Honestly I think there’s no better illustration of the fact that money and power corrupt than the fact that OpenAI started out as a non-profit intended dedicated to safe and ethical AI, and turned into what it is now.
Reading Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 18 of 25, 3 bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 23 of 25, 6 bingos.
Book Riot: 20 of 24.
Physical TBR: 11 of 12.
World of Whimm: 23 of 24, 8 bingos.