Review: Empire of AI – by Karen Hao

Karen Hao is a young, dynamic specialist tech journalist and author. She covers the impact of artificial intelligence or #AI on society. This large volume of work is an indepth study into the rise of AI, with a particular focus on its lead company, OpenAI. From its inception as. not-for-profit to the mega business it has become and its global impact, Hao investigates every aspect of this business, looking closely at the life and character of its key figure, Sam Altman and heading into some dark teritories looking at exploited AI workers in the developing world and also the environmental impact of this new disruptive tech invention. The book gives a great insight into the inner working of the company at the forefront of the revolution and also compares some if the business activities among competitors and how it has dealt with its allies and also analyses the cast of great characters invovled in the production of AI. The author has conducted lengthy interview with about 300 key people and also travelled around the world to investigate her opus.

Sam Altman is the CEO and visionary co-founder of OpenAI. The book explores the exigencies of his flamboyant character and we go from his crazy stewardship techniques of the business, to his uber wealth and success, down to low points such as when he is fired by the board and also the lurid allegations of incestual child sex abuse made by his sister, Annie. Sam Altman is the main star of AI and goes from beign a rather anonymous character to being a global media icon. He is the driving force of it all and it is difficult for his co-workers – or anyone else for that matter – to contain his ambition and drive and to steer him correctly. He is a loose cannon at times but equally one can see how driven he is and it is a measure of his success and abilities that the world now has this new technology at its fingertips that is altering human life and ultimately th quest for GenAI or Generative AI is really within reach in the forerseeable future. It is questionable how OpenAI has morphed from being a non-profut to the way it has now done huge business deals with Microsoft and changed its company policy to now being a for profit venture. Some of Altman’s morals and integrity are at times very questionable but one feels drawn to his character and Hao tels a biographical account of his journey.

Other key figures in the book and at OpenAI are co-founder Ilya Suskever, tech guru and richest man in the world, Elon Musk, Microsoft founder, Bill Gates and Greg Brockman another co-founder of the OpenAI venture.

I think the key for me in reading the book was in gaining a much better insight into the mechanisms of how AI functions and works and what its goals are and also the pitfalls and challenges it has faced in its development. When using ChatGPT, I had never thought to question on how many low paid workers in say, for example, Kenya, had had to train the model and stop it from spewing out harmful content. I hadn’t questioned really the environmental impact and the cost of all the chips and vast data centres necessary for it all to function. Some of the figures that are bandied about in the book, especially with the big deals going down like the one with Microsoft are totally out of this world in terms of their magnitude. It is interestign watching how everything develops and is put together. There seems to be a lot of friction between the applied side of the business and the tech side. As the company grows it becomes more of a megalith and difficult to govern and control. They intitially try to keep a nice friendly, family sort of bubble for their working environment but ultimately it turns ito a huge corporate mega-business in reality.

There isn’t that much about the potential dangers of AI within the book. It is focussed more on the present and recent history of the building of OpenAI than the more extreme potentially catastrophic effects of the technology although the book does touch upon some potential dangers. Certainly the whole moral side of the work OpenAI does made me question a lot of preconceived notions I had. Is it right for Hollywood stars to have their material used or is there a limit on what data can be scraped. The abundance, for example, of pornograsphy on the internet, thre up a load of potential pitfalls in AI development. It is hard to ignore it all and eventually it was used in the data grabbing necessary for the tech to function properly.

I worry as AI is still in its infancy and we are perhaps going through a honeymoon period with it. I hope that Karen Hao continues to document her chosen subject and we can study the future development of AI. It could all go wrong and by Christ with the story told in the pages of “Empire of AI’ it is a very wonder indeed that the AI tech we aurrently use has made it through to the publkic domain in the first place. This book is a rollercoaster ride through the cutting edge tech business sector and it explores a topic at the forefront of global human development with the new technology that is artificial intelligence. Go out and buy a copy and see what the future has in store.