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In Empire of AI, Karen Hao has built a compelling portrait of the internal workings OpenAI, and through it, a portrait of both the AI movement and the modern tech industry. I hope that everyone who has contemplated bringing AI into their businesses and workflows reads it: the tools and even the promise of the technology has been shaped by these specific people and their assumptions, values, and worldviews.

The title is apt. OpenAI’s approach is empire — this is an organization that seeks to centralize power rather than democratize it. It readily sits on a shelf alongside books like Careless People, but the themes here are sometimes reminiscent of Succession. It’s about power. The whole industry is about power. And Hao lays it out clearly and beautifully.

We’re left with a little sprig of hope in the epilogue. I agree with the premise here: there’s a version of these technologies that are tightly bound, built respectfully, and aim to do one thing well. That’s the future. This idea that there should be one tool that does everything well, built with many billions of dollars, the exploitation of the global majority, and with neurotic executives with egos the size of warships at the helm, is not long for this world. May it depart quickly and with as little further damage as possible in its wake.

I'm late to this book - it's been a part of the discourse for a decade or so now. It's strong, punchy, and pithy: a quick guide to the mindsets we need in order to prevent totalitarianism. But its sections on media and the internet feel particularly weak - a call to support print newspapers doesn't feel like the right thing - and I think its claims about communism are not particularly nuanced. Still, we need calls to action, and this is a good one.

Written with absolute moral clarity, the argument here is searing, precise, and visceral. While I don't know how to make people care either, the immediacy of the author's writing goes a long way towards bringing this genocide, these atrocities and abuses of human life at the hands of empire, home. He makes the unimaginable imaginable, but does not dilute the horror in the process. These are true atrocities, and the claim made in the book's title is obviously correct. I will be thinking about some of the passages here - which aren't just passages, of course, they're real things that happened to real people - for the rest of my life. I should. We all should. I wish I could force everyone to read this.

Very readable: a pageturner book that keeps you going through a riveting plot at breakneck speed. I also enjoyed the discussion of alien-ness in the context of building relationships of all kinds. I was a little taken aback by the CIA turning out to be the good guys; the aliens in many ways being as harmful as the knee-jerk reactions against them made them out to be; the truth-seeking indie journalist being one of the bad guys; and the (spoilers) thing that Ampersand does to Cora without permission towards the end. I felt like the themes either weren't thought through as well as they might be, or were otherwise more right-wing than I typically want to enjoy. Which is a shame, because those things aside, I enjoyed the read very much.

A much-needed overview of the shortcomings of AI - and, in particular, of the AI vendors. There's a lot here that's important for everyone to understand as the technology threatens to become omnipresent. I'm glad to recommend it as a primer; it's important to keep your eyes open. But the question is left open: okay, so now what?

I liked the suggestion that smaller, more ethically-trained, more specific software is better, and I completely agree. But in a world where the generalist models are being added to everything, where rampant surveillance is being incentivized by their use, and where businesses and non-profits are being held accountable by their shareholders and board members to investigate the technology because of the hype surrounding it, what are the real, immediate solutions? The problem is clear; the way forward is not.

I fought my way through Parable of the Talents, not because it isn’t masterful - it is - but because Octavia Butler’s writing unflinchingly covers ideas and traumas that have become more relevant in the time since its publication. Butler was a soothsayer, unfortunately able to accurately predict the future based on the treatment of people in her present. It’s a harrowing read with obvious parallels to our current right-wing context. But it wasn’t until the epilogue that it completely destroyed me. This is a human story at its heart, with living, breathing characters who love and yearn, sometimes messily. It’s real, for every definition of real. I fought my way through Parable of the Talents, not because it isn’t masterful - it is - but because Octavia Butler’s writing unflinchingly covers ideas and traumas that have become more relevant in the time since its publication. Butler was a soothsayer, unfortunately able to accurately predict the future based on the treatment of people in her present. It’s a harrowing read with obvious parallels to our current right-wing context. But it wasn’t until the epilogue that it completely destroyed me. This is a human story at its heart, with living, breathing characters who love and yearn, sometimes messily. It’s real, for every definition of real.

A complicated book: the author is complicit in the activities she describes, which no amount of ironic detachment or claims of trying to change the system from the inside can hide.

But it’s engagingly-written, frequently hilarious, and jaw-dropping on almost every page. She’s done us a service by painting this insider’s picture of Facebook / Meta. It’s one that I hope every politician who hopes to touch tech policy will read.

I also hope everyone in the tech industry reads it. Not only because it’s a cautionary tale in itself, but because the personalities described here are rife in the industry. I’ve never spoken to Mark or Sheryl or Joel or most of the rest of them, but I’ve met people like them, with those same sensibilities, and they are every bit as shallow and driven by power as is laid out here. These are the people to avoid. These are the people who will lead us into hell. These are the people who, in very real ways, through genocides, swung elections, and the violence of indifference to real human suffering, already are.

Five stars; great book, would read again.