Politechs
Politechs

Empire - Karen Hao

25 May 2026 33:42 Politechs

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About this episode

Tech journalist Karen Hao joins us to discuss her book, "Empire of AI". Karen explains why she believes that the Silicon Valley hyper-scaled LLM flavour of AI is an imperial technology, and has become even more explicitly imperial in the 12 months since the book first came out as it is being more and more incorporated in the US military's wars. The paperback edition of the book has just been released in the US and UK, so if you live in either of those places and haven't read the book yet, be sure to pick it up!

Mentioned in this episode:

  1. Empire of AI - book by Karen Hao
  2. Empire of AI - UK paperback
  3. Empire of AI - US paperback
  4. Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 - podcast by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
  5. Microsoft's Hypocrisy on AI - article by Karen Hao [permalink]
See the transcript footnotes for more!

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To view full show notes, including transcripts, please visit the episode page. Be sure to follow us on BlueSky and Mastodon!

Cover art by Anya K. Jordan @anyakjordan.bsky.social

Theme music by Xylia

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