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Apr 27, 2026
Empire of AI
Inside the Race for Total Domination
Summary
In this episode, host Joe Williams talks to tech journalist Karen Hao, whose recent book Empire of AI sheds light on the inner workings of AI giants to understand how these companies foster inequality, concentrate wealth and exploit resources in a race to dominate the sector. Hao compares the objectives, means, and power of AI companies to 19th-century colonial empires, arguing that AI has the potential to drive rampant global inequality and universalise specific groups' interests in a way that threatens to undermine democracy and individual liberty. We also discuss the dangers of uncritically accepting narratives of inevitability around AI, the environmental and political implications of power concentration among a small class of elites and the need to unpack dominant discourses to locate their ideological specificity. The conversation ends by speculating on possible worst-case outcomes and imagining viable alternatives to currently dominant AI models.
