I just finished reading “Empire of AI” by Karen Hao a profoundly researched and ethically piercing book that should resonate deeply with readers in #Argentina🇦🇷, a country acutely aware of the global dynamics of exploitation, technological dependence, and asymmetrical power.
Karen Hao, an investigative journalist with rare access to the internal workings of #OpenAI, takes us far beyond the glossy Silicon Valley narratives. She traces the evolution of OpenAI from its original nonprofit ethos to its present state—a hyper-accelerated corporate juggernaut fueled by billions from Microsoft, consumed by its race to develop Artificial General Intelligence (#AGI). But her real focus is not the machines. It’s the humans—especially those at the margins—who make this empire possible.
For readers in #Argentina, with its long history of resistance to extractive models—be they colonial, financial, or technological—Empire of AI hits close to home. Hao exposes a form of “data colonialism” in which workers from the Global South, including Venezuela and Kenya, are employed in psychologically damaging roles as data labelers and content moderators. They work in obscurity, invisible to the end users of AI tools, often under contracts that strip them of rights, pay them below survival wages, and bind them to silence.
She also examines how #AI threatens cultural and creative sovereignty. Artists around the world, whose work is scraped without consent, are seeing their livelihoods evaporate. The global South becomes both the test field and the casualty zone of these experiments.
Hao offers a subtle but powerful warning: the future of AI is not predestined. Alternative models do exist—such as indigenous-led data governance projects in New Zealand or international open-source collaborations like #BigScience. These offer more ethical, transparent, and participatory approaches. But the dominant path is one of concentration: of capital, compute power, and control—mirroring familiar imperial patterns.
#Argentina🇦🇷 stands at a critical juncture. As we debate our role in the global #AIeconomy—whether through science policy, academic alliances, data regulation, or our creative industries—Hao’s book is a call for vigilance, imagination, and moral clarity. “Empire of AI” reminds us that technological progress is not neutral. It is shaped by choices, and those choices determine whether AI becomes a tool of liberation or of yet another empire.
A must-read for policymakers, diplomats, technologists, educators, and every citizen who refuses to be just a user—but demands to be a voice.
#LibroRecomendado #WorthToRead📚
