AI is the New Empire

Exploring the dystopian technofeudalism at heart of the western A.I. race

The unnamed book EMPIRE OF AI is mine, based on 300+ interviews, 7 yrs covering AI, & my time as the first reporter who got extensive access to OpenAI. I sought OpenAI’s perspective throughout. For months they said it was coming. It never did. Pre-order: https://t.co/i5rNJ45fNo. https://t.co/Drr8Gzv7vW pic.twitter.com/0aJpF9P26U

— Karen Hao (@_KarenHao) April 4, 2025

The A.I. Religious Cult: “Just like empires of the past were competing against one another, so are these tech giants. There was this aggressive race of we, the French Empire, are better than the British Empire. We, the British Empire, are better than the Dutch Empire.

And we need to continue to relentlessly race and be number one because we’re the ones that have the right civilizing mission to bring modernity and progress to all of humanity.

And where their missions might have once been about scientific exploration and transparency, they are now about profit, which has resulted in a landscape where they are just scaling at all costs.”

this is about controlling “the civilizational transformation” of the “one global village.” “Our collective attention is their Manifest Destiny.” From Maggie’s “there is no society” to now, “Culture is just what is Next on your phone — and that is A.I.”

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?