The True Threat of OpenAI

In the opening pages of Empire of AI, Karen Hao writes that “this is not a corporate book.” For readers hungry for an insider’s view of OpenAI, though, there is plenty to chew on. Hao pulls together a meticulous history of the company and its most headline-making dramas. That includes the splintering off of key executives and researchers to found the rival AI company Anthropic; the internal scramble to scale up ChatGPT as it became the fastest-growing consumer application in Silicon Valley history; and the brief but dramatic ousting of CEO Sam Altman by the OpenAI board in 2023.