AI’s Imperial Agenda
The Intercept Briefing
The Intercept
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched ChatGPT in 2022, the race for dominance in the field of artificial intelligence hit warp speed. Silicon Valley has poured billions of dollars into developing AI, building data centers, and promising a future free from the chains of unfulfilling work across the globe.
But in “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI,” tech reporter Karen Hao pulls back the curtain, unveiling the human and environmental cost of artificial intelligence and the colonial ambitions undergirding Silicon Valley's efforts to fuel the rise of AI.
This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jessica Washington speaks to Hao about her book and the dawn of the AI empire. “Empires similarly consolidate a lot of economic might by exploiting extraordinary amounts of labor and not actually paying that labor sufficiently or at all,” says Hao. “So that's how they are able to amass wealth — because they're not actually distributing it.”
“The speed at which they're constructing the infrastructure for training and deploying their AI models” is what shocks Hao the most, as “this infrastructure is actually not technically necessary, and ... somehow the companies have effectively convinced the public and governments that it is. And therefore there's been a lot of complicity in allowing these companies to continue building these projects.”
“They have effectively been able to use this narrative of [artificial general intelligence] to accrue more capital, land, energy, water, data. They've been able to accrue more resources — and critical resources — than pretty much anyone in history,” Hao says, warning of "the complete aggressive and reckless” growth of AI infrastructure, but stresses that none of this is inevitable. “There is a very clear path for how to unlock the benefits of AI without accepting the colossal cost of it.”
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Intercept Briefing. I'm Jessica Washington. |
| 0:08.0 | In 2022, Sam Altman's company, OpenAI, launched ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that unleashed a wave of excitement over artificial intelligence. |
| 0:19.0 | And it kick-started a race for dominance in the field. |
| 0:23.6 | Tech CEOs from Altman at OpenAI to Mark Zuckerberg at Meta and Alex Karp at Palantir |
| 0:29.6 | have lauded artificial intelligence as the future of humanity. |
| 0:34.6 | During a New York Times New Work Summit in 2019, years ahead of Open AI's launch, |
| 0:40.5 | of ChatGPT, Altman predicted that artificial intelligence could eliminate poverty. |
| 0:46.3 | It can be great. I mean, I think we have the potential to eliminate poverty, |
| 0:51.4 | solve climate change, cure a huge amount of human disease, like, educate everyone in the world phenomenally well. |
| 0:57.9 | In a more recent CNBC interview, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, claimed that AI made the United States the dominant country in the world. |
| 1:06.7 | AI makes America the dominant country in the world. So just start there. Every other country in the world, like I spent half my life in Europe, they're whining and crying. It's like we have the right chips, we have the right software, we have the right engineers, we have the right culture, we have the right people. |
| 1:20.8 | And in a video posted to Facebook, unveiling META's new AI research lab in July, M Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to develop personal |
| 1:29.9 | superintelligence that would free its users to focus on what truly matters. |
| 1:34.9 | Advances in technology have freed much of humanity to focus less on subsistence and more on |
| 1:41.3 | the pursuits that we choose. |
| 1:42.9 | And at each step along the way, most people have decided to use their newfound productivity |
| 1:47.0 | to spend more time on creativity, culture, relationships, and just enjoying life. |
| 1:53.0 | And I expect superintelligence to accelerate this trend even more. |
| 2:00.0 | Only, what if those utopic visions mask a far darker reality? |
| 2:05.6 | In Empire of AI, dreams, and nightmares in Sam Altman's Open AI, Karen Howe exposes |
| 2:11.7 | the underlying reality of the lofty promises made by Sam Altman and the tech industry. |
| 2:17.9 | Howe reveals the human toll of artificial intelligence, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Intercept, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Intercept and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.