Karen Hao's new book is a skeptical look at Sam Altman and Elon Musk's AI empire

Summary

NPR's Book of the Day: Deep Dive into Karen Howe's Empire of AI

Release Date: May 26, 2025
Host: Andrew Limbong
Book Discussed: Empire of AI by Karen Howe

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1. Introduction to Empire of AI

Andrew Limbong opens the episode by introducing Karen Howe's latest work, Empire of AI, a critical examination of OpenAI—the organization behind the groundbreaking artificial intelligence model, ChatGPT. Howe, a seasoned journalist, initially covered OpenAI six years prior when the company was envisioned as a nonprofit dedicated to ethical AI development.

Karen Howe [00:01:36]: "We have a skeptical look at one of the most famous companies of our time."

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2. The Origins and Mission of OpenAI

OpenAI was founded with a noble mission: to perform fundamental AI research for the benefit of all humanity and to ensure that its advancements are open-sourced for public good. The organization's inception was supported by tech luminaries, including Elon Musk, who harbored significant concerns about the potential repercussions of unchecked AI development.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:01:49]: "It was founded as a research nonprofit meant to do this kind of fundamental research for, as it said, the benefit of all of humanity."

However, Howe's investigative reporting revealed underlying tensions and contradictions within OpenAI's operations, setting the stage for the narrative explored in Empire of AI.

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3. Internal Conflicts and Leadership Struggles

A central theme in Howe's book is the ideological and personal clash between OpenAI's co-founders, Sam Altman and Elon Musk. While both were united in their intent to control AI development to ensure positive outcomes, they diverged sharply on who should lead the charge.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:03:15]: "There was an inherent tension in wanting to be first and wanting to be open."

This rivalry not only highlighted personal ambitions but also reflected deeper philosophical differences regarding AI's role in society.

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4. Sam Altman's Role and Leadership Style

Sam Altman, despite not being an inventor or engineer, played a pivotal role in OpenAI's ascent. His exceptional talent in fundraising and storytelling propelled the company forward, enabling it to secure substantial investments and expand its influence in the AI sector.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:05:46]: "He's a once in a generation fundraising talent... ability to paint these extremely persuasive visions of the future."

Altman's approach was marked by his ability to craft compelling narratives about AI's potential, often aligning with Silicon Valley's emphasis on visionary leadership.

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5. The Firing and Restoration of Sam Altman

In 2023, a significant upheaval occurred when OpenAI's board decided to terminate Altman's position as CEO. This decision was influenced by distrust regarding his intentions and the ongoing ideological battle within the AI community between "Boomers" (those optimistic about AI) and "Doomers" (those wary of its destructive potential).

Unnamed AI Expert [00:06:44]: "The board did not know what was behind his words."

Altman's abrupt dismissal triggered concerns about the company's stability and future direction. However, substantial backing from major investors like Microsoft, which had invested $13 billion in OpenAI, led to his reinstatement.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:08:34]: "Microsoft would dump you... believed in Altman more than his company."

This incident underscored the immense capital and strategic maneuvering influencing leadership decisions within tech giants.

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6. Current State of OpenAI and AI Leadership

While OpenAI remains a household name, especially due to ChatGPT, its technological dominance appears to be waning as AI becomes more commoditized. Developers are increasingly adopting a vendor-agnostic approach, diluting OpenAI's once unassailable lead.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:09:32]: "AI has become commoditized and OpenAI doesn't necessarily have a meaningful lead anymore."

Furthermore, the United States' position as a leader in AI governance is questioned. The lack of democratic oversight and unchecked corporate control raises concerns about ethical AI development and societal impacts.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:10:10]: "The US has dramatically fallen behind" in responsible AI governance.

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7. Empire of AI: A Comparison to Historical Empires

Howe draws a parallel between modern AI conglomerates and the colonial empires of the 1800s. She argues that just as historical empires centralized power and exploited resources without public consent, AI giants are similarly amassing control over data, labor, and energy resources.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:11:00]: "They are exploiting labor... seizing up data... without the realization that it would be used and commoditized."

This analogy serves to highlight the potential dangers of concentrated power in the AI sector, emphasizing the risk to democratic institutions and individual agency.

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8. The Environmental and Resource Impact of AI

A critical concern addressed in the discussion is the environmental footprint of AI technologies. The exponential growth in data centers and supercomputing power required for advanced AI models is placing unprecedented demands on global energy grids.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:12:27]: "The projections for the amount of energy... is historic. It's unprecedented."

This surge not only strains existing infrastructure but also exacerbates environmental challenges, raising questions about the sustainability of AI's trajectory.

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9. Conclusion: The Future of AI and Society

Karen Howe's Empire of AI presents a sobering examination of the AI industry's trajectory, questioning whether the pursuit of technological supremacy is undermining ethical considerations and societal well-being. The book serves as a call to action for more transparent, democratic, and sustainable approaches to AI development.

Unnamed AI Expert [00:12:43]: "Democracy cannot survive in a world where the vast majority of people no longer have agency."

By drawing historical parallels and highlighting contemporary challenges, Howe urges readers and stakeholders to critically assess the balance between innovation and its broader impacts on humanity.

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Final Thoughts

Empire of AI by Karen Howe offers a compelling narrative that intertwines corporate intrigue, ethical dilemmas, and historical parallels to explore the complex landscape of artificial intelligence today. NPR's Book of the Day effectively distills these themes, providing listeners with a thorough understanding of the stakes involved in AI's evolution.

Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Some of the world's greatest storytellers aren't authors, poets, filmmakers or musicians. They're salesmen. This is a point that comes up in today's book, Empire of AI. It's written by journalist Karen Howe, and it's a deep look at OpenAI. That's the artificial intelligence company that started as a nonprofit with the idea that you could develop AI for good. The company CEO is Sam Altman, and he got there not by being an inventor or an engineer. As Howe tells npr, Steve Inskeep ultimate holds status in the world of AI because he's a once in a generation storytelling talent. That's coming up.

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[Karen Howe]

We have a skeptical look at one of the most famous companies of our time. Karen Howe wrote it. She's a journalist who first covered OpenAI six years ago when it was promising to develop artificial intelligence ethically.

[Unnamed AI Expert]

It was founded as a research nonprofit meant to do this kind of fundamental research for, as it said, the benefit of all of humanity. And it was meant to open source that research to be for the public benefit.

[Karen Howe]

The word open was right there in the name. OpenAI had the backing of tech giants, including Elon Musk, who worried about AI's future effects on the world. So Karen Howe arranged to spend time in the company's offices as a young reporter for the MIT Technology Review. Her experience led her to ask questions, which eventually led to a book called Empire of AI. It explores the company's research, its development of ChatGPT, its firing and restoration of CEO Sam Altman and more.

[Unnamed AI Expert]

They were incredibly secretive, which didn't seem quite right because first of all that's the opposite of transparent. But second of all, why would you be secretive if you're a nonprofit that's purely doing research in the interest of the public? You would be secretive if you might have some kind of commercial intent. Also, they were incredibly competitive. When I was interviewing executives, they really emphasized that, that they needed to be number one in AI progress. They needed to be first to what they called artificial general intelligence. And to me, there was an inherent tension in wanting to be first and wanting to be open.

[Karen Howe]

To what extent were you able to trace some of these contradictions back to an important figure in the founding of OpenAI? His anxieties, his desires, Elon Musk.

[Unnamed AI Expert]

I think there were definitely elements of Elon Musk, but there was also a lot of Sam Altman because they were the two co founders of the organization. And actually a lot of the contradictions of the organization when I started profiling it were also products of the disagreements between Musk and Altman. So they both agreed that they should control the development of AI Ultimately, the that was going to be what would result in the best outcome for the world is if they are the ones that have their hands on this thing. Where they disagreed was who among the two of them should be the one with the ultimate power. So they clashed over who should be the CEO, who should lead the organization.

[Karen Howe]

I feel that you helped me understand that this is more than a clash of personalities. You have people who are worried about the future of humanity, the future of the planet, and thinking we need to develop artificial intelligence in an ethical way, and that's why this should be a non profit. But we also need to be ahead of everybody else in order to shape things. And therefore we need to be really good. And therefore we need to get immense investment and therefore we need to attach for profit motives to the nonprofit. I mean, they kind of reason themselves out of their own original idea.

[Unnamed AI Expert]

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think a lot of OpenAI and AI development in general is very much an ideological clash, not just personality clashes. Certainly they're huge personalities and they're all very egotistical and they all want to be the one that makes AI in their image. But there are these deep seated, kind of quasi religious beliefs that also underpin the whole thing, where some people believe that AI could have the potential to bring the world to utopia and they want to run as fast as possible to that objective. And other people believe that AI has the possibility to destroy humanity and they want to run fast to the finish line of building this powerful technology so that that they're the ones that ensure that it's not another quote unquote bad actor that is going to do it first and therefore lead to the demise of humanity.

[Karen Howe]

Who is Sam Altman and what did he bring to the table, given that he himself was not an inventor or a brilliant engineer?

[Unnamed AI Expert]

He's a once in a generation fundraising talent. That is his particular skill. And he's also once in a generation storytelling talent, which is effectively why he's so good at fundraising. He is able to paint these extremely persuasive visions of the future. He was already prominent within Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley very much runs on stories and telling stories about the future. When he says something to someone, what he's saying is more tightly correlated with what he thinks they need to hear than what he actually believes or the ground truth of the thing he's able to say. The things that really provoke people to kind of rally towards a general, broad sweeping mission that he paints.

[Karen Howe]

Is this why his board briefly fired him in 2023, although they were forced to bring him back?

[Unnamed AI Expert]

It very much has to do with that. There were two things that were happening. One was they didn't really trust what he was saying. But two goes back to this ideological clash that was happening and still happening within AI development. There are two kind of main factions within the AI world. There are the Boomers and the Doomers, the people who believe in Utopia, AI bringing utopia, and the people believing AI will destroy humanity. I think of them as two sides of the same coin in that ultimately both of them profess that they should be the one to control AI development for the good of humanity. But the board at the time was more leaning towards the Doomer ideology.

[Karen Howe]

Altman was more of a Boomer.

[Unnamed AI Expert]

The thing that's interesting about Altman is he, depending on who you talk to, they will say that he's a Boomer or they'll say that he has Doomer leanings. Throughout my reporting, I talked with a lot of people who worked either closely with him for years or not so closely with him. And regardless of where they sat, how close they were, and for how long they worked with him, no one could quite articulate exactly what Altman believes. And I think that is part of also the reason why the board ended up firing him is they just did not know what was behind his words.

[Karen Howe]

I guess we should tell the other side of this story, which is very interesting, which is that Altman said, what are you talking about? I'm completely shocked. I've always told you the truth. And Microsoft, which had a huge, huge deal worth billions of dollars with OpenAI, ultimately reached out and said, if you get rid of Sam Altman, we're going to take Sam Altman, we're going to keep Sam Altman and dump you. Microsoft and Saj and Adela, the CEO of Microsoft, seemed to believe in Altman more than his company.

[Unnamed AI Expert]

I think ultimately we have to understand that there was a lot of capital at play in that decision. And when the board decided to fire Altman, OpenAI was in the middle of a tender offer that could have left some employees with millions of dollars. And without Altman, that tender offer would have gone away. Microsoft would have been left without an OpenAI anymore, and they had already pumped at that point, $13 billion into the company. The kind of strategic maneuver that Nadella made was, well, let me say that I'll hire Altman to my company, but also create conditions that escalate the pressure enough that the board has to retract its decision. Because ultimately the board, as much as they didn't want Altman to lead the company, they also didn't want the company to not exist.

[Karen Howe]

Has OpenAI remained the leader in artificial intelligence?

[Unnamed AI Expert]

It's an interesting question because it depends on how you would measure it in terms of name recognition. You could argue that they are the lead because most people have heard of ChatGPT. Application developers are now moving towards a model where they are trying to make their platforms AI vendor agnostic. And so in terms of the actual capability of the technology, it seems like increasingly AI has become commoditized and OpenAI doesn't necessarily have a meaningful lead anymore.

[Karen Howe]

Is the United States still definitely the world leader in artificial intelligence?

[Unnamed AI Expert]

It also really depends on what we consider to be leadership. Like, is the US leading in democratic governance of AI systems? Absolutely not. We are currently in a situation where these companies have kind of free reign to do whatever they want with all of the data that they want, with all of the land and the energy and the water that they want to build their data centers, and without any democratic input from the broader population. So in terms of leadership in that regard, I think the US has dramatically fallen behind.

[Karen Howe]

Can you tell me one more thing? You call the book Empire of AI and you make an extended comparison to old time colonial empires of the 1800s, say, what are you talking about?

[Unnamed AI Expert]

We are essentially seeing the recreation of how empires of old used to work. Like empires of old, there were a small group of people at the top that were able to make decisions for everyone else around the world and basically everyone else around the world didn't have agency, didn't have say, and they lived in the thrash of the decisions that were happening at the top based on the whims of the people at the top. And we are now in basically the same situation. I mean they are still exploiting lots of labor around the world in the sense that they are starting to apply real pressure to people's ability to receive economic opportunity to by creating technologies that automate away a lot of work. And they're also seizing up a lot of resources to continue fortifying their empire. They're seizing up land for their data centers, they're seizing up data that people put online without the realization that it would be used, it would be commoditized and used to turn a profit. And we have to be extremely cognizant because if we follow this path to its logical conclusion, democracy cannot survive in a world where the vast majority of people no longer have agency and say and control over their own lives.

[Karen Howe]

And you didn't even mention electricity, which is just a huger and huger and huger demand on the entire world because of this technology, right?

[Unnamed AI Expert]

Yeah, absolutely. The projections for the amount of energy that will need to be added to the grid in order to support the accelerating demand of data centers and supercomputers around the world is historic. It's unprecedented.

[Karen Howe]

Karen Howe is a journalist and the author of Empire of AI. Thanks so much.

[Unnamed AI Expert]

Thanks so much.

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