{"id":193001,"date":"2025-09-14T17:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/14\/karen-hao-on-the-empire-of-ai-agi-evangelists-and-the-cost-of-belief-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T17:00:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:00:34","slug":"karen-hao-on-the-empire-of-ai-agi-evangelists-and-the-cost-of-belief-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/14\/karen-hao-on-the-empire-of-ai-agi-evangelists-and-the-cost-of-belief-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Karen Hao on the Empire of AI, AGI evangelists, and the cost of belief | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"tcembed-iframe tcembed--megaphone wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"Karen Hao on the making of a $90B AI empire\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=TCML5214017451#?secret=89wBjARfAO\" data-secret=\"89wBjARfAO\" width=\"670\" height=\"200\"><\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the center of every empire is an ideology, a belief system that propels the system forward and justifies expansion \u2013 even if the cost of that expansion directly defies the ideology\u2019s stated mission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For European colonial powers, it was Christianity and the promise of saving souls while extracting resources. For today\u2019s AI empire, it\u2019s artificial general intelligence to \u201cbenefit all humanity.\u201d And OpenAI is its chief evangelist, spreading zeal across the industry in a way that has reframed how AI is built.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI was interviewing people whose voices were shaking from the fervor of their beliefs in AGI,\u201d Karen Hao, journalist and bestselling author of \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/karendhao.com\/empire\" target=\"_blank\">Empire of AI<\/a>,\u201d told TechCrunch on a <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/podcast\/karen-hao-on-the-making-of-a-90b-ai-empire\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent episode<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/podcasts\/equity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Equity<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In her book, Hao likens the AI industry in general, and OpenAI in particular, to an empire.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe only way to really understand the scope and scale of OpenAI\u2019s behavior\u2026is actually to recognize that they\u2019ve already grown more powerful than pretty much any nation state in the world, and they\u2019ve consolidated an extraordinary amount of not just economic power, but also political power,\u201d Hao said.<strong> <\/strong>\u201cThey\u2019re terraforming the Earth. They\u2019re rewiring our geopolitics, all of our lives. And so you can only describe it as an empire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">OpenAI has described AGI as \u201ca highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work,\u201d one that will somehow \u201celevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These nebulous promises have fueled the industry\u2019s exponential growth \u2014 its massive resource demands, oceans of scraped data, strained energy grids, and willingness to release untested systems into the world. All in service of a future that many experts say may never arrive.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\">\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__location\">San Francisco<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__date\">October 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hao says this path wasn\u2019t inevitable, and that scaling isn\u2019t the only way to get more advances in AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou can also develop new techniques in algorithms,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can improve the existing algorithms to reduce the amount of data and compute that they need to use.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But that tactic would have meant sacrificing speed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen you define the quest to build beneficial AGI as one where the victor takes all \u2014 which is what OpenAI did \u2014 then the most important thing is speed over anything else,\u201d Hao said. \u201cSpeed over efficiency, speed over safety, speed over exploratory research.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"wp-block-image__credits\"><strong>Image Credits:<\/strong>Kim Jae-Hwan\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket \/ Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For OpenAI, she said, the best way to guarantee speed was to take existing techniques and \u201cjust do the intellectually cheap thing, which is to pump more data, more supercomputers, into those existing techniques.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">OpenAI set the stage, and rather than fall behind, other tech companies decided to fall in line.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAnd because the AI industry has successfully captured most of the top AI researchers in the world, and those researchers no longer exist in academia, then you have an entire discipline now being shaped by the agenda of these companies, rather than by real scientific exploration,\u201d Hao said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The spend has been, and will be, astronomical. Last week, OpenAI said it expects to burn through <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2025\/09\/06\/openai-business-to-burn-115-billion-through-2029-the-information.html\" target=\"_blank\">$115 billion in cash<\/a> by 2029. Meta said in July that it would spend up to <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/07\/30\/meta-to-spend-up-to-72b-on-ai-infrastructure-in-2025-as-compute-arms-race-escalates\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$72 billion<\/a> on building AI infrastructure this year. Google expects to hit up to <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2025\/07\/23\/googles-85-billion-capital-spend-spurred-by-cloud-ai-demand.html\" target=\"_blank\">$85 billion<\/a> in capital expenditures for 2025, most of which will be spent on expanding AI and cloud infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meanwhile, the goal posts keep moving, and the loftiest \u201cbenefits to humanity\u201d haven\u2019t yet materialized, even as the harms mount. Harms like job loss, concentration of wealth, and <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/08\/25\/how-chatbot-design-choices-are-fueling-ai-delusions-meta-chatbot-rogue\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AI chatbots that fuel delusions and psychosis<\/a>.<em> <\/em>In her book, Hao also documents workers in developing countries like Kenya and Venezuela who were exposed to disturbing content, including child sexual abuse material, and were paid very low wages \u2014 around $1 to $2 an hour \u2014 in roles like content moderation and data labeling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hao said it\u2019s a false tradeoff to pit AI progress against present harms, especially when other forms of AI offer real benefits.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She pointed to Google DeepMind\u2019s Nobel Prize-winning <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/tag\/alphafold\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AlphaFold<\/a>, which is trained on amino acid sequence data and complex protein folding structures, and can now accurately predict the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acids \u2014 profoundly useful for drug discovery and understanding disease.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThose are the types of AI systems that we need,\u201d Hao said. \u201cAlphaFold does not create mental health crises in people. AlphaFold does not lead to colossal environmental harms \u2026 because it\u2019s trained on substantially less infrastructure. It does not create content moderation harms because [the datasets don\u2019t have] all of the toxic crap that you hoovered up when you were scraping the internet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alongside the quasi-religious commitment to AGI has been a narrative about the importance of racing to <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/07\/23\/trumps-ai-strategy-trades-guardrails-for-growth-in-race-against-china\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">beat China in the AI race<\/a>, so that Silicon Valley can have a liberalizing effect on the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cLiterally, the opposite has happened,\u201d Hao said. \u201cThe gap has continued to close between the U.S. and China, and Silicon Valley has had an illiberalizing effect on the world \u2026 and the only actor that has come out of it unscathed, you could argue, is Silicon Valley itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, many will argue that OpenAI and other AI companies have benefitted humanity by releasing ChatGPT and other large language models, which promise huge gains in productivity by automating tasks like coding, writing, research, customer support, and other knowledge-work tasks.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the way OpenAI is structured \u2014 part non-profit, part for-profit \u2014 complicates how it defines and measures its impact on humanity. And that\u2019s further complicated by the news this week that <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/09\/11\/openai-secures-microsofts-blessing-to-transition-its-for-profit-arm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">OpenAI reached an agreement with Microsoft<\/a> that brings it closer to eventually going public.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two former OpenAI safety researchers told TechCrunch that they fear the AI lab has begun to confuse its for-profit and non-profit missions \u2014 that because people enjoy using ChatGPT and other products built on LLMs, this ticks the box of benefiting humanity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hao echoed these concerns, describing the dangers of being so consumed by the mission that reality is ignored. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEven as the evidence accumulates that what they\u2019re building is actually harming significant amounts of people, the mission continues to paper all of that over,\u201d Hao said. \u201cThere\u2019s something really dangerous and dark about that, of [being] so wrapped up in a belief system you constructed that you lose touch with reality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/09\/14\/karen-hao-on-the-empire-of-ai-agi-evangelists-and-the-cost-of-belief\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the center of every empire is an ideology, a belief system that propels the system forward and justifies expansion \u2013 even if the cost of that expansion directly defies the ideology\u2019s stated mission. For European colonial powers, it was Christianity and the promise of saving souls while extracting resources. For today\u2019s AI empire, it\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-193001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}