Karen Hao
Author of Empire of AI; investigative AI reporter
Former senior AI editor at MIT Technology Review and reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. Her 2025 book Empire of AI investigates OpenAI, data labor and the resource costs of large models.
Key arguments & positions
- Argues the dominant scale-at-all-costs approach to AI is a choice, not a technical necessity, and that it concentrates power and cost in a few firms.
- Documents the labor behind AI — data annotators and content moderators in Kenya, Venezuela and elsewhere — as a core part of the story, not a footnote.
- Reports on the water and energy footprint of data centers in the communities that host them.
Accomplishments
- Author of Empire of AI (2025), a New York Times bestseller investigating OpenAI.
- Former senior AI editor at MIT Technology Review; has reported for The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic.
- First journalist to profile OpenAI at length from the inside (2020).
Papers & key writings
Links
In the library
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