The One Percent Rule
I was initially very sceptical about reading Karen Hao’s Empire of AI. I had preconceived ideas about it being gossip and tittle tattle. I know, have worked with, and admire many people at OpenAI and several of the other AI Labs. But I pushed aside my bias and read it cover to cover. And even though there was little new in the book for me, having been in the sector so long, I am happy I read it. I am happy because Hao’s achievement is not in revealing secrets to insiders, but in providing the definitive intellectual and moral framework to understand the story we have all been living through.
What distinguishes Empire of AI is its refusal to indulge in mysticism. Generative AI, Hao shows, is not destiny. It is the consequence of choices made by a few, for the benefit of fewer.
Hao compels us to take the claim literally. This new faith has its tenets: the inevitability of AGI; the divine logic of scaling laws; the eschatology of long-termism, where harms today are justified by an abstract future salvation. And like all theologies, it operates best when cloaked in power and shorn of accountability.