Karen Hao’s Empire of AI really emphasized for me how much stock is being put in AGI—especially as a motivator for AI companies. I am fine wirh concepts being hard to define, but I do think things get tricky when you can’t articulate how you’ll know when you’ve met the goal that serves as your raison d’être.

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.

It was a real choice to start this dystopian comic the same day I got to the chapter in Karen Hao’s Empire of AI about Silicon Valley outsourcing the worst jobs to the Global South in the name of providing economic opportunity.