Karen Hao’s Empire of AI is a rare inside account of how OpenAI, Sam Altman, and a small circle of Silicon Valley elites built the most powerful AI company in the world.
In this episode of Thinking on Paper Book Club, Mark Fielding and Jeremy Gilbertson read the first four chapters, tracing the tension between OpenAI’s founding ideals and the reality of billion-dollar deals, boardroom battles, and global consequences.
The conversation covers the pivotal moments that shaped the rise of OpenAI: Elon Musk’s departure, Bill Gates’ push for useful AI applications, and the GPU arms race that turned a nonprofit mission into a corporate empire.
Along the way, we question how power, profit, and politics intersect with technology, and whether governance can keep up when nations, companies, and personalities compete for dominance in artificial intelligence.
This is Part 1 of our deep dive into Empire of AI, covering themes of trust, bias, inequality, and the mythology of “AI for humanity.” If OpenAI is the empire, Sam Altman is its Michael Corleone, ambitious, strategic, and relentless.
But like any empire, the costs are not evenly distributed.
Please enjoy the show.
And share with a curious friend (who loves books).
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Chapters
(00:00) Introduction to Empire of AI
(01:54) The Empire Strikes Back
(05:13) Karen Hao, The Journalist
(07:38) Do You Trust Open AI?
(10:18) Why OpenAI Made ChatGPT
(11:47) Scaling OpenAI
(12:33) Google, Deep Mind and Ai For humanity
(15:12) Greg Brockman
(17:02) Sam Altman's Personal Brand 24:46 Timnit Gebru
(25:25) How does AI benefit humanity?
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Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz
Watch the book club on our dedicated YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/OfQu65-6GuA
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