Karen Hao isn’t the first to unveil the dark side of the AI industry. There’s been Emily Bender and Alex Hanna with “The AI Con,” James Muldoon in “Feeding the Machine,” and Gary Marcus in “Rebooting AI.” Before those works, and even before the rise of Generative AI, Mary Gray and Siddhartha Suri published “Ghost Work” in which they detail the hidden human labor needed to build many kinds of AI models. Each of these books covers a different aspect of what Hao addresses in “Empires of AI.” These include the environmental impacts of data centers, the psychological toll on data annotators and content moderators, and the outright theft of copyrighted material by AI giants to train ever-larger models.

However, Hao points to these issues from an insider’s perspective. Drawing on internal emails, chat messages, and countless interviews with current and former OpenAI employees, she fills in the gaps that other writers on these topics had to leave blank.

Her narrative begins with Sam Altman’s short-term ouster from his role as CEO in 2023. At the time, the board justified its decision by citing behavior that undermined the board’s trust in Altman. However, Hao’s extensive research tells a much larger story about the man’s character, actions, and background. One walks away from this episode with a much deeper understanding of the impossible position the board was in at the time. Should they publicly denounce Altman’s countless petty misdemeanors? Draw attention to the many times he lied to or withheld information from the board? Or to when he promised impossible things to OpenAI’s partners—Microsoft, first and foremost—and then deflected the blame onto others? What about all the little schemes and games he played to cement and grow his power? Or should they keep quiet and just get rid of him? Needless to say, the board chose the latter and immediately regretted it. The backlash—in public and inside OpenAI—was immense. Altman was swiftly reinstated. The rest, as they say, is history.

This episode bookends Hao’s story, which can be read as a personal biography of Sam Altman to some degree. Hence, if you’re looking for juicy details—abuse allegations, empire building, wealth, and fame—you’ll find plenty. But if you’re more interested in the big picture of the AI industry and its relationship to society and democracy than in tabloid-style gossip, you likewise won’t be disappointed.