LokiEmpire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's #OpenAI is a 2025 nonfiction book by award-winning journalist Karen Hao that exposes the rise of OpenAI and the global tech arms race. Published on May 20, 2025, by Penguin Press, the 496-page work draws on over 300 interviews with insiders, leaked documents, and Hao's seven years of reporting on "AI colonialism."
The book details how OpenAI transformed from a safety-focused nonprofit into a secretive empire driven by a race for artificial general intelligence (AGI), relying on scarce compute resources, massive data extraction, and exploitative labor practices in the Global South. Hao argues that the industry's pursuit of power has created a new age of corporate empire comparable to the 1800s East India Company, with significant environmental costs including alarming spikes in energy and water usage.
