A world-renowned reporter is sounding the alarm after embedding herself in the upper echelons of the artificial intelligence industry and discovering that Silicon Valley elites are desperately scrambling to develop a digital “God.”
Karen Hao, a former reporter for MIT Technology Review, is raising red flags about the artificial intelligence industry after spending years investigating the inner workings of OpenAI and speaking with hundreds of insiders.
She is now warning that some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful figures are engaged in what she describes as an ideological quest to create a “machine god.”
Hao says her extensive investigation into OpenAI revealed a secretive culture driven by an obsession with developing artificial general intelligence (AGI).
AGI is a form of AI that proponents believe could eventually surpass human intelligence itself.
The findings form the basis of Hao’s new book, “Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination,” which argues that the race to build superintelligent machines has transformed from a supposedly altruistic mission into a high-stakes pursuit of power, influence, and unprecedented wealth.
Inside the Secretive World of OpenAI
Hao was granted extraordinary access to OpenAI’s headquarters in 2019, shortly after the company secured a $1 billion investment from Microsoft.
At the time, OpenAI publicly portrayed itself as a transparent nonprofit dedicated to ensuring advanced AI would benefit humanity.
But Hao says she quickly discovered a very different reality.
“Right off the bat, I started realising that something was not right,” Hao said.
Despite OpenAI’s public commitment to openness, Hao described an environment characterized by secrecy, restrictions, and internal paranoia.
She was reportedly escorted throughout the building, barred from certain areas, and prohibited from attending key meetings.
Employees were warned not to speak with her outside approved channels, while security personnel were reportedly given photographs of her and instructed to monitor her movements.
“As I was talking to researchers, I noticed that they kept being very nervous about saying things they weren’t supposed to, which was bizarre, because the entire premise of OpenAI was they were going to share everything,” Hao said.
According to Hao, the atmosphere inside the company was “competitive, secretive, and insular.”
‘The Ideological Pursuit of the Machine God’
As her investigation expanded, Hao interviewed hundreds of former employees and individuals connected to OpenAI’s leadership circle.
Those conversations led her to conclude that many of the company’s top figures viewed the pursuit of artificial superintelligence with a near-religious intensity.
She describes the phenomenon as “the ideological pursuit of the machine god.”
Several former employees recounted stories that Hao says reflected the culture surrounding AGI development.
Among them was an executive retreat in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, where senior OpenAI figures allegedly gathered around a fire while former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever burned an effigy representing AGI.
Former employees told Hao that only after leaving OpenAI did they feel they had “come back down to Earth.”
The investigation also uncovered what Hao described as extreme secrecy surrounding company research.
According to her reporting, Sutskever once speculated about how to protect sensitive technology if someone attempted to sever his hand and use it to bypass a palm scanner protecting company systems.
Hao also reported that former OpenAI executive Dario Amodei drafted sensitive strategy documents on computers disconnected from the internet and distributed them only as physical printouts.
Race for Superintelligence Reshapes Entire Industry
According to Hao, OpenAI’s transformation accelerated as company leaders became increasingly convinced that achieving AGI first was the most important objective.
That pursuit drove OpenAI toward a strategy centered on massively scaling large language models by feeding them unprecedented quantities of data and computing power.
The approach required enormous financial resources, ultimately leading OpenAI to establish a for-profit arm and seek outside investment.