Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's Open AI with KAREN HAO

“My book is called Empire of AI because I'm trying to articulate this argument and illustrate that these companies operate exactly like empires of old. I highlight four features that essentially encapsulate the three things you read. However, I started talking about it in a different way after writing the book.The four features are: they lay claim to resources that are not their own, which is the centralization of resources; they exploit an extraordinary amount of labor, both in the development of the technology and the fact that they're producing labor-automating technologies that then suppress workers' ability to bargain for better rights; they monopolize knowledge production, which comes when they centralize talent.”In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with investigative journalist Karen Hao. She explains that OpenAI is anything but “open”—very early on, it left behind that marketing tag to become increasingly closed and elitist. Her massive study, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI had a rather different subtitle in its UK edition: Inside the reckless race of total domination. She fleshes out the overlap between these two points of emphasis. Hao argues that in general, the AI mission “centralizes talent around a grand ambition” and “centralizes capital and other resources while eliminating roadblocks, regulation, and dissent.” All the while, “the mission remains so vague that it can be interpreted and reinterpreted to direct the centralization of talent, capital, resources, however the centralizer wants.” Karen explains that she chose the word “empire” precisely to indicate the colonial nature of AI’s domination: the tremendous damage this enterprise does to the poor, to racial and ethnic minorities, and to the Global South in general in terms of minds, bodies, the environment, natural resources, and any notion of democracy. This is a discussion everyone should be part of.Karen Hao s a bestselling author and award-winning reporter covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society. She was the first journalist to profile OpenAI and wrote a book, Empire of AI, about the company and its global implications, which became an instant New York Times bestseller. She writes for publications including The Atlantic and leads the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series, a program that trains thousands of journalists worldwide on how to cover AI. She was formerly a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review.. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American Humanist Media Award, an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30, and the TIME100 AI. www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

“I feel that when you don't tell your story, it's as if you have a limited existence. We can always have some kind of choice, but I'm saying that the story we choose may be the most crucial choice that we make, because this story will affect all the other choices.”Etgar Keret is one of the most inventive and celebrated short story writers of his generation, a voice that captures the absurdities and profound loneliness of modern life with a deceptive, almost casual wit. His work, translated into dozens of languages, uses fantastical premises—from alien visitations to parallel universes—to illuminate the most human of truths. His new collection, Autocorrect, explores a world grappling with technology, loss, and the aftershocks of a global pandemic and, more recently, war. His awards include the Cannes Film Festival’s Caméra d’Or (2007), the Charles Bronfman Prize (2016), and the pres­tigious Sapir Prize (2018). Over a hundred short films and several feature films have been based on his stories. Keret teaches creative writing at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He now has a weekly newsletter on Substack called Alphabet Soup. He's also the new MFA Director of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he's pioneering a new approach to storytelling. Joining me today from Tel Aviv is the great Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret.“When I write my stories, I don't want to solve things in life. I just want to persuade myself that there is a way out. Maybe I am in a cell, maybe I'm trapped. Maybe I won't make it, but if I can imagine a plan for escape, then I'll be less trapped because at least in my mind, there is a way. I think that my parents are survivors. They always talked about this idea of humanity. My parents always said to me, when you look at people, don't look at their political views; that's not important. Look at the way that they look at you. If they see you, if they listen to you, if they can understand your intention, even if it's a failing one, they're your people. And if they can't, it doesn't matter.I think that when I came with my mother and father, they thought there are people, there are human beings, and there are people who want to be human beings but are still struggling. And you go with humanity; you go with the person who can go against his ideology if his heart tells him something.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“When I write my stories, I don't want to solve things in life. I just want to persuade myself that there is a way out. Maybe I am in a cell, maybe I'm trapped. Maybe I won't make it, but if I can imagine a plan for escape, then I'll be less trapped because at least in my mind, there is a way. I think that my parents are survivors. They always talked about this idea of humanity. My parents always said to me, when you look at people, don't look at their political views; that's not important. Look at the way that they look at you. If they see you, if they listen to you, if they can understand your intention, even if it's a failing one, they're your people. And if they can't, it doesn't matter.I think that when I came with my mother and father, they thought there are people, there are human beings, and there are people who want to be human beings but are still struggling. And you go with humanity; you go with the person who can go against his ideology if his heart tells him something.”Etgar Keret is one of the most inventive and celebrated short story writers of his generation, a voice that captures the absurdities and profound loneliness of modern life with a deceptive, almost casual wit. His work, translated into dozens of languages, uses fantastical premises—from alien visitations to parallel universes—to illuminate the most human of truths. His new collection, Autocorrect, explores a world grappling with technology, loss, and the aftershocks of a global pandemic and, more recently, war. His awards include the Cannes Film Festival’s Caméra d’Or (2007), the Charles Bronfman Prize (2016), and the pres­tigious Sapir Prize (2018). Over a hundred short films and several feature films have been based on his stories. Keret teaches creative writing at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He now has a weekly newsletter on Substack called Alphabet Soup. He's also the new MFA Director of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he's pioneering a new approach to storytelling. Joining me today from Tel Aviv is the great Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“I'm Lebanese. I grew up in Lebanon during the Civil War, and I came to the United States as a graduate student with the intention of going back. I never wanted to stay here. I really thought that my life would happen in Beirut, in a city that I loved and hated in the healthiest of ways. My investments, both literary and intellectual, were rooted there. I came here as a graduate student and joined the PhD program, and then the events continued to unfold there, making life more and more of a risk, building a life in a place like Lebanon. The most important counterpoint in my life was meeting my partner, Ahmad Almallah, who is Palestinian. So immediately, my life became the life of a Palestinian by association. There’s a lot of rage now in many aspects of my life, but all that aside, my personal experience—both professional and personal, and at home, familial—are not exceptional. Many other people are experiencing intimidation, silencing, and feeling cornered, censored, and oppressed just because they took a stand—a very decent, normal, basic human stand against genocide.”In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Huda Fakhreddine, writer, translator, and scholar of Arabic literature. Among the many topics they touch upon are the challenges of teaching Arabic literature, especially Palestinian literature, in a time of genocide, when universities, professional organizations, and political groups militate against any honest discussion of these topics, and punish those who do. They talk about the notion of belonging and the importance of being able to choose what to belong to, and what not to. Huda speaks of the freedom found in living in Arabic, and explains what that means to her. She also reads in Arabic and English Nima Hasan’s stunning and wrenchingly beautiful poem, “Old Song.”Huda J. Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge, 2023). Among her translations are The Sky That Denied Me: Selections from Jawdat Fakhreddine (University of Texas Press, 2020), The Universe, All at Once: Selections from Salim Barakat (Seagull Books, 2024), and Palestinian: Four Poems by Ibrahim Nasrallah (World Poetry Books, 2024). Her creative work includes a book of creative non-fiction titled Zaman saghīr taḥt shams thāniya (A Brief Time under a Different Sun), Dar al-Nahda, Beirut, 2019 and the forthcoming Wa min thamma al-ālam (And then the World), Manshūrāt Marfa’, Beirut, 2025. She is co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and section editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam.www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

“I think my role and where I'm most comfortable is focusing on the economic harms that the choices this administration is making will limit access to affordable, clean energy. Affordable energy overall, and that they will wind up harming the American people. EDF is standing up and fighting the Trump administration in court every single day. We believe, based on the facts and the law, that we have very good cases and expect to see more wins than not. When the government sets aside all of the things they need to do to land appropriately and just say, "We don't care. This is what Donald Trump wants," there is recourse to step in, intervene, and challenge that. They were sloppy the first time he was president. They're even more brazen now.”David Kieve has been on the front lines of some of the most critical environmental debates of our time. Before becoming president of EDF Action, the advocacy and political arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, he was in the White House as the director of public engagement at the Council on Environmental Quality. But his journey to the West Wing started on the campaign trail, where he was tasked with a unique role: convincing a broad coalition of voters that Joe Biden was the candidate to tackle the climate crisis. He is a strategist who understands not just the science of climate change but what it takes to implement those policies. We talk about connecting climate policy to everyday costs and the political will required to confront climate change.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“As I was reading Hooks and Freire, a colleague recommended Adrian Rich's essay "Teaching Language in Open Admissions." It was in that essay that I first read about her experiences teaching at CUNY during open admissions, learning that she taught alongside June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Toni Cade Bambara. Eventually, that essay led me to their archival teaching materials. I was really excited because I found in those materials concrete teaching methods, things they were doing in their own classrooms that I then started trying in my classrooms as well. I also really liked their educational philosophies, thinking about what it means for college to be free and the fact that they were teaching during this revolutionary era. What would that look like today? What would it mean? What could free college bring to our society? What does free college make possible? All of those things coming together led me to the project.” In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Danica Savonick about her marvelous book entitled Open Admissions: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Free College. This is a riveting and deeply inspiring story of how each of these luminaries in the fields of literature and feminism found their way into the City University of New York in the 1960s, when community activists had forced open what was called the Harvard for the proletariat to admit new classes of Black, brown, and other people of color. Savonick shows through copious archival research how Bambara, Jordan, Lorde, and Rich each came to find radical teaching methods in collaboration with these new students, and how their experiences with this new pedagogy affected their creative and other writing in profound and lasting ways. This is a critical history we can and must learn from today, when federal and state governments have added to the damage and violence done by the neoliberal university. We find exactly the tools and models we need to create spaces for education for liberation both within, but also outside, the Academy.Danica Savonick is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Cortland. Her current project focuses on the radical writers and artists who taught at the experimental Livingston College (part of Rutgers University) in the 1970s. Her research has appeared in MELUS, American Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Radical Teacher, Keywords for Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, Public Books, and The Chronicle of Higher Ed.https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

“I want people to understand South Asian art as broader than a single gallery or a single artist, but as a larger cultural movement. I want people to encounter art in all parts of their lives, and I’m constantly thinking about new ways to achieve that. I was very aware, as someone launching a South Asia-focused gallery, that this was the cultural dynamic that undergirded the way that most people in the West were thinking about art from the region. Taking that on directly and inviting artists to work with that theme was a really important ground for setting the ethos of the gallery and the types of critical questions we wanted to tackle with the work we were doing.”My guest today is Rajiv Menon, a gallerist and curator who is carving out a distinctive space in the contemporary art world. Based in Los Angeles, Rajiv Menon holds a PhD from NYU, where he studied global media and visual culture, and he's also a passionate collector of South Asian art. He founded Rajiv Menon Contemporary with a clear mission: to bring artists from South Asia and its diaspora to a wider audience, and to cultivate a new generation of art collectors within these communities. His exhibitions have tackled fascinating themes, from the exuberant and sometimes overwhelming world of the Indian wedding through Viraj Khanna's intricate textile art in Why Did I Say Yes?, to a deep dive into the creativity of Kerala in Three Steps of Land, and a compelling look at how artists transform nostalgia into an aesthetic movement in The Past Is a Country. His work resonates far beyond the gallery walls, aiming to shift our collective culture. He's also recently been honored by the City of Los Angeles for his contributions to the arts. @rajivmenoncontemporaryEpisode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

In this time of rapid technological change, how do we hold onto our humanity? How do stories, traditions, and community help us find meaning in loss and face an uncertain future? How can science, art, and spirituality open new pathways to understanding ourselves and the human experience?PAUL SHRIVASTAVA (Co-President, The Club of Rome) discusses the need for a holistic, eco-civilizational future, emphasizing that science, technology, and economics are important but not the whole picture. He shares the importance of embodied, emotional, and spiritual learning as essential to evolving human consciousness in a technologically dominated world.BAYO AKOMOLAFE (Philosopher, Founder of Emergence Network) shares a story about the loss of his father and how it forced him to mature quickly and become the breadwinner for his family. He reflects on the lessons learned from his children, especially his autistic son, who teaches him about grace, possibility, and futurity.MICHEL FORST (Human Rights Advocate & the UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders) explores how theology and meditation serve as ongoing sources of inspiration, shaping his values and career choices in human rights advocacy.DR. GUY LESCHZINER (Neurologist, Author of The Nocturnal Brain) on the concept of free will, suggesting that much of what we do is influenced by factors beyond our control. He discusses the importance of striving to make the world better, the role of sleep and dreams in memory and emotional processing, and the future of education.EIREN CAFFALL (Author of All the Water in the World) highlights the importance of preserving knowledge and human history, imagining how future generations might rebuild society after catastrophe by holding onto stories, traditions, and the hope of repair.DR. FERNANDO GARCÍA-MORENO (Neuroscientist) explains that while our brains have not changed biologically for thousands of years, cultural evolution has accelerated. He emphasizes the unique human roles of generating and transmitting knowledge across generations.NATASHA HAKIMI ZAPATA (Author of Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America From Around the Globe) shares her inspiration from the generosity and hope she encounters in others, and describes how she's inspired by connecting with nature.IRVIN WEATHERSBY JR. (Author of In Open Contempt) reflects on the influence of his church upbringing, music, and his grandmother on his writing and creative expression.

Today, we talk about creativity—not as a luxury, but as a national strategy. Sheila Deegan is one of Ireland’s leading cultural architects. Over three decades, she’s shaped the artistic life of Limerick and helped reimagine the role of creativity in civic life. She now serves in the Creative Ireland Programme, a bold cross-government initiative that sees culture as a force for personal and national wellbeing. From children’s creative freedom to climate action, from local festivals to cross-border partnerships, Creative Ireland asks a radical question: what happens when a country places imagination at the heart of public policy? Sheila Deegan joins me now to talk about that question—about culture, community, the role of art in a divided world, and what it means to build something lasting through the machinery of government."I left the local environment to pursue Creative Ireland because I really believe in this broader approach. Let's try not to silo things. Let’s try and get people working collaboratively for the benefit of everybody, not just one program over the other. I really hope that young people can hold a sense of social justice as we move forward into a very complicated world. They need to remember that we're all just people and that we all just need each other, whether that's creatively or within the landscape or within the economics."Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“I work in between archeology and anthropology in this field called either historical archeology or contemporary archeology. At the heart of that is the relationship between objects and humans. How do we write about the past or the present in terms of listening to human voices or evidence from things where maybe human voices have been erased or haven't left as much of a mark on the written records as others? Wrapped up with that, though, is always the risk of dehumanization, of the treatment of human lives as if the boundary between a subject and an object is one that is permeable, not in a sort of positive way, but in a more sinister way. There is a long history of people being treated as things.”In this episode of Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Dan Hicks about the present’s responsibility to itself. How do not only monuments, but also the very idea of monumentality, serve to mystify and perpetuate beliefs that maintain social orders that deserve to be strenuously re-evaluated? Archaeologist and anthropologist Dan Hicks traces the development of a particularly virulent strain of monument-worship, that which emerges out of what he calls “militarist realism,” which harnesses technologies of war, particularly colonial, white supremacist war, to build institutions, disciplines, museums in its image in order to permanently maintain a border between those deemed human subjects and the object-worlds of the non-human—which includes racial others. Rather than grant the past immunity, Hicks argues that we need to decide for ourselves what we chose to remember, and what deserves to be forgotten.Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at Oxford University, Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a Fellow of St Cross College. He has written widely on art, heritage, museums, colonialism, and the material culture of the recent past and the near-present. Dan's books include The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution (Pluto 2020) and Every Monument Will Fall: a story of remembering and forgetting (Hutchinson Heinemann 2025). Bluesky/Insta: @ProfDanHicks www.palumbo-liu.com https://speakingoutofplace.com Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social Instagram @speaking_out_of_place