Tl;dr — A genuinely fascinating book, and wonderfully researched and sourced. Hao meticulously documents the past decade of OpenAI’s history, and the tensions that arise (and boil over) among its nonprofit vision, corporate reality, and drama of maturity. A great read, yet fundamentally the same story as every other mega tech company in the modern era. Like many people, AI has become technologically intertwined with my life, despite not actively seeking it out. It seems that every app I use has some new AI thing integrated, including the Google Docs I’m writing this on which has an annoying AI pop up every time my cursor hovers over the bottom of the screen (please if you know how to turn this off, let me know). Employers push AI workflows. Forecasters say us white collar workers will be out of jobs in two years. Perhaps, as some predict, we all may just be dead in five years because the AI will kill us all. I’m a “late adopter” of tech. I use technology, and I do use AI to some extent, but I don’t orient my life around it or seek the latest new thing. I’m not particularly jazzed about new products. I don’t get wrapped up in the hype. But it’s undeniably a massive societal shift worth paying attention to to a degree given its impact on us all. I’ve been meaning to read Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao, and I finally got around to it last week. The book is specifically focused on OpenAI and the tumultuous history of the company over the past decade (the book ends at the end of 2024 and was released in 2025), but it also demonstrates just how much was going on research and tech-wise prior to November 2022 when AI became a global phenomenon with OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT to the public. Since then, the past four years have unleashed increasingly powerful AI; its controversy growing in tandem with its promise. Empire of AI is a long read — a healthy 400+ pages of reading, meticulously researched and sourced. It’s an impressive...