"Empire of AI": Karen Hao on How AI Is Threatening Democracy & Creating a New Colonial World

In our July Fourth special broadcast, we revisit our interview with longtime technology reporter Karen Hao, author of the new book Empire of AI, which explores the accruing political and economic power of AI companies — especially Sam Altman's OpenAI. Her reporting uncovered the exploitation of workers in Kenya, attempts to take massive amounts of freshwater from communities in Chile, along numerous accounts of the technology's detrimental impact on the environment. "This is an extraordinary type of AI development that is causing a lot of social, labor, and environmental harms," says Hao, in an extended interview.