'Scale at all costs', Silicon Valley uses competition with China as excuse to push for lighter regulation: Author
'Empire of AI' author Karen Hao says it might be time to rethink 'pedal to the metal' approach on data centre expansion as AI efficiency gains demonstrated by China's 'deepseek' challenge power assumptions.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Science Fiction 'Hugely Shapes OpenAI's Imagination And Where They're Going,' Author Karen Hao Says
OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman is 'deeply obsessed' with the 2013 film Her, according to technology journalist Karen Hao. 'Science fiction hugely shapes OpenAI's imagination and where they're going,' Hao said during a discussion Tuesday of her bestselling new book, Empire of AI, hosted by the Pulitzer Center in New York. More from Deadline Luca Guadagnino Eyes 'Artificial' At Amazon MGM As Next Movie With Andrew Garfield, Monica Barbaro And 'Anora' Actor Yura Borisov Circling Sky Boss Dana Strong Raises Artificial Intelligence Copyright Concerns: "I Can't Fathom How A Small Producer Keeps Up" Tastes Great, Less Filling? Report On Meta Plan For Cheaper, Fully AI-Made Ads Boosts Tech Giant's Stock As Media Agency Shares Slump Altman 'has evoked throughout OpenAI's history his idea that Her is the thing that OpenAI should building,' the author said of the film directed by Spike Jonze and starring Joaquin Phoenix and the voice of Scarlett Johansson. 'Artificial generative intelligence doesn't have a definition, and so they actually use pop culture as the way to describe and put a shape to the nebulous thing that they're trying to achieve.' An 'under-talked-about' current in the world of AI, Hao said, is the 'deep, intertwined relationship between science fiction and pop culture portrayals of these things and, ultimately, the technologies that we get. Because a lot of these people are sci-fi nerds and they want these things, and then it shapes their beliefs, their ideas of what they want to do.' Hao was interviewed by Marina Walker Guevara, the executive editor at the Pulitzer Center who previously oversaw the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers investigative journalism projects. Empire of AI, which was published two weeks ago, is one of two new books to profile Altman, along with Keach Hagey's The Optimist. Hao, by her own description, is delivering a 'critique' of the arms race that AI has become. Much of her talk focused on her reporting around the world documenting the harmful effects of AI, including communities whose water supply has been compromised by data center construction. Low-paid workers in the global south, she writes, must sift through reams of objectionable content in order to train large-language models. Her book also traces the development of OpenAI, which began as a well-intentioned non-profit co-founded by Elon Musk before turning into a commercial entity worth billions of dollars and funded by Microsoft. A central question during the discussion was whether there are ways to push back against the immense wealth and dominance of Silicon Valley. 'Every community that I spoke to, regardless of that there were artists having their intellectual property taken or water activists who were having the fresh water taken, they were all saying the same exact thing. When they encounter the empire, they feel this incredible loss of agency, a profound loss of the agency to self-determine their people,' Hao said. If that loss is permitted, she argued, 'democracy cannot survive, because democracy is based on the fact that people feel that agency and they' willing to go to the booth to vote, because they know that it will matter. And so the theme that I find hopeful is that there are so many movements that I encountered around the world that are now trying to reclaim that the agency.' She cited a protest in Chile, where activists managed to hold tech companies to account for the way their AI projects were harming the water supply. 'If we we allow this to happen 100,000-times-fold, if we really amplify and support this work, that is how we can get this trajectory of air development to turn from a more imperial approach, and top-down, 'we just say whatever we want and it goes' to a more broad-based, democratically beneficial version of AI,' Hao said. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More Everything We Know About 'Nobody Wants This' Season 2 So Far
CNBC
4 days ago
- CNBC
The great divide between those who see AI as a force for good, and those who say it's dangerous
Karen Hao, author of the new book "Empire of AI", discusses the clear dividing line between those in the tech space who believe AI can lead to utopia and those who think it will only create massive problems, and perhaps the end of the human race.
CNBC
27-05-2025
- CNBC
'Scale at all costs', Silicon Valley uses competition with China as excuse to push for lighter regulation: Author
'Empire of AI' author Karen Hao says it might be time to rethink 'pedal to the metal' approach on data centre expansion as AI efficiency gains demonstrated by China's 'deepseek' challenge power assumptions.
