This is a good book, with a powerful thesis and a great epilogue that ties things together. It isn’t perfect, but I think most of my quibbles are related to the subject matter and the genre. It’s hard to write a book about a contemporary subject of such importance, and I think it’s tricky to write a book that combines history with more of a critical take on the AI ecosystem.

Even if you can see some of the seams in all of that, Hao does an excellent job balancing all of this. I learned a lot about the ins and outs of OpenAI, and she captures a lot of the most compelling critiques of the company (and broader phenomenon). I highly recommend it.

• Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
• Karen Hao
• OpenAI
• Sam Altman
• AI
• generative AI