Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

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「這是一本暢銷且扣人心弦的佳作，不僅在矽谷，更在全球範圍內引發波瀾……透過《AI 帝國》，郝從根本上塑造了許多人對這家處於 AI 革命核心公司的認知與理解。」——《時代》雜誌，「2025 年 TIME100 AI」

「優秀且具深度的報導。」——吳修銘 (Tim Wu)，《紐約時報》

「令人震驚且研究嚴謹……這是關於 OpenAI 與 ChatGPT 如何誕生，以及它們可能將我們帶向災難性境地的必讀紀錄。」——《Vulture》

由一位從初期便能親近接觸山姆·奧特曼（Sam Altman）OpenAI 世界的資深 AI 內部觀察者，帶來一場對史上最宿命的科技軍備競賽的啟示錄。這場競賽正透過這家推動狂熱的公司駕駛艙，即時重塑著這個星球。

當 AI 專家兼調查記者凱倫·郝於 2019 年開始報導 OpenAI 時，她以為他們是正義的一方。這家以非營利形式成立、將安全奉為核心使命的組織，其領導人山姆·奧特曼告訴我們，它是為了制衡純粹商業化且具潛在危險的力量而存在的。這能出什麼錯？

隨著時間推移，郝開始更深地思考這個問題。她日益意識到，這個極具破壞性的行業核心真相是：其成功願景需要前所未有的資源——高端芯片的「算力」與創建海量大型語言模型的處理能力、需要大規模積累的龐大數據量、在全球南方以血汗工資「清理」這些數據的人類勞工，以及隱藏其下、令人震驚的能源與水資源消耗激增。事實是，我們已經進入了一個陰森的新帝國時代：全球只有極少數具備規模的公司能進入這個賽場。作為憑藉 ChatGPT 突破而領先的隊長，OpenAI 將如何抵禦這種誘惑？

劇透預警：它沒能抵擋。在微軟數十億資金的武裝下，OpenAI 正以驚人的速度奔跑，後頭跟隨的是人類歷史上最有價值的一群公司——而這一切將通往何處，甚至連他們自己也無法定義。這段期間，郝始終與公司內部和行業保持深厚的聯繫，因此她親身接觸到了那個震驚整個科技界的事件——奧特曼突遭開除及凱旋回歸。這裡首次完整披露的幕後故事，揭示了控制這項技術的人究竟是誰。但這不僅僅是一家公司的故事，無論它多麼迷人。壓在 OpenAI 眾人身上的巨大壓力也正在扭曲其他人的判斷——正如權力運作的一貫方式。赤裸的權力總能找到掩蓋自己的意識形態；沒有人認為自己是壞人。但在這期間，如郝透過在全球各地的無畏報導所示，巨大的剝削巨輪仍在運轉。透過結合矽谷工程師、肯亞數據勞工和智利水權活動家的觀點，郝呈現了迄今為止我們所見過最完整的 AI 圖像及其影響，並對未來的走向進行了尖銳的分析。這是一份來自新經濟指揮艙以及真實苦難發生地的驚人目擊報告，《AI 帝國》穿透了定義我們這個時代的行業面紗。

A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction • A New York Times Bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by Smithsonian, Scientific American, and Elle • Winner of the Porchlight Business Book Award

“A bestselling page-turner that has made waves not just in Silicon Valley but around the world . . . With Empire of AI, Hao is fundamentally shaping many people’s perceptions and understanding of the company at the center of the AI revolution.” —TIME Magazine, “TIME100 AI 2025”

“Excellent and deeply reported.” —Tim Wu, The New York Times

“Startling and intensely researched . . . an essential account of how OpenAI and ChatGPT came to be and the catastrophic places they will likely take us.” —Vulture

From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.