Cover Image for Dreams and Nightmares in the Empire of AI | Karen Hao | EDGE Webinar | 28 Aug

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Dreams and Nightmares in the Empire of AI | Karen Hao | EDGE Webinar | 28 Aug

EDGE Community

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About Event

You were promised safe, ethical AI. A nonprofit built to protect humanity. A new kind of tech company. But what if that story was just the opening scene?

When longtime AI expert and 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, it was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely market forces.
But the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that it requires an unprecedented amount of proprietary resources: the ‘compute’ power of scarce high-end chips, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans on the ground ‘cleaning it up’ for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the need for energy and water underlying everything. We have entered a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI setting a breakneck pace, as a small group of the most valuable companies in human history try to chase it down.

Webinar Details:

Date: Thursday, Aug 28, 2025
Time: 7:00 PM IST
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https://www.edgecommunity.org/live

About Karen Hao:

Investigative journalist known for exposing the hidden costs and ethics of AI.
Former MIT Tech Review reporter who broke major stories on Facebook and misinformation.
Co-creator of In Machines We Trust, an award-winning podcast on AI and society.
Her “What is AI?” visualization was exhibited at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.
Author of Empire of AI, a bestselling deep dive into OpenAI’s rise and ripple effects.

This isn’t hype. It’s the story behind the story of AI’s rise.
Come, let’s see what power really looks like in the age of algorithms.

About EDGE:
Established in 2017, EDGE is a digital private members community that stands at the intersection of thought leadership and actionable change. Memberships are through recommendations and interview only.

For queries or to RSVP, please contact: hello@edgecommunity.org

Let’s cut through the hype, unpack the science, and simplify the choices—together.

Team EDGE