IM 835: Glitch Lord - Inside OpenAI's Secret Struggles and the 'Empire of AI' With Karen Hao
Intelligent Machines (Audio)
Leo Laporte
4.2 • 895 Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2025
⏱️ 165 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Go behind the curtain at OpenAI as bestselling author Karen Hao shares stories of infighting, ego, and shifting agendas. Find out why even OpenAI's security had her face on alert during her investigation.
- Karen Hao reveals OpenAI's secretive culture and early ambitions
- OpenAI's shifting leadership and transparency: from nonprofit roots to Big Tech power
- Defining AGI: moving goalposts, internal rifts, and philosophy debates
- OpenAI's founders dissected: Altman, Brockman, and Sutskever's styles and motives
- Critiquing the AI industry's resource grabs and "AI imperialism"
- How commercialization narrowed AI research and the dominance of transformers
- China's AI threat as Silicon Valley's favorite justification, debunked
- Karen Hao details reporting process and boardroom chaos at OpenAI
- GPT-5 skepticism: raised expectations, lackluster reality, and demo fatigue
- Karen Hao's bottom line: AI's current trajectory isn't inevitable — pushback is needed
- Harper Reed shares vibe coding workflows using Claude Code

- AI commoditization—why all major models start to feel the same

- Western vs. Chinese open-source models and global AI power shifts

- Google antitrust ruling: AI's rise dissolves traditional search monopoly
- "Algorithm movies" spark debate over art, entertainment, and AI's creative impact

- Meta's AI talent grab backfires amid exits and cash-fueled drama
- Anthropic's "historic" author settlement likely cements fair use for AI training

- DIY facial recognition: Citizen activists unmask ICE using AI tools

- Picks: Byte Magazine's 50th, AI werewolf games, Berghain bouncer AI test, and arthouse film
"Perfect Days"
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Paris Martineau
Co-Host: Harper Reed
Guest: Karen Hao
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's time for intelligent machines. We've got a big show for you. |
| 0:04.0 | Karen Howe is our guest. Her book, Empire of AI, is a bestseller and tells the inside story of what's happening, what happened, and what might happen at Open AI. |
| 0:15.1 | You're going to love that. Then Harper Reed joins us for a fun episode. We'll talk about how he uses Claude |
| 0:21.1 | to create a nickname for himself. That and a whole lot more. Coming up next on I.M. |
| 0:29.2 | Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is Twit. |
| 0:44.3 | This is Intelligent Machines, episode 835, recorded Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025. |
| 0:46.2 | Litch Lord. |
| 0:57.9 | It's time for Intelligent Machines, the show we cover the latest in AI robotics and all the bijoueterie surrounding you. |
| 1:06.6 | I'm going to use a different a different thesaurus entry for is it Gygaws, Jeff from now on. |
| 1:07.2 | Gygos. |
| 1:07.8 | Gagos. |
| 1:10.9 | That are surrounding you in your everyday life. |
| 1:17.3 | That is on my right, Jeff Jarvis, Professor Emeritus of Journalistic Innovation at the Craig Newmark. |
| 1:17.8 | Graduates grade of journalism. |
| 1:21.5 | Lay the Craig Newmark jingle in after and post-production. |
| 1:24.9 | Oh, no, I guess not. |
| 1:25.9 | No, it'll be here. |
| 1:30.5 | He is now Montclair State University and SUNY Stony Brook where he's about to get to work because the semester is about |
| 1:35.7 | to begin. Except you, you go to, do you actually go anywhere? You just, no. You're sitting here. |
| 1:43.0 | The entire world sees me with this microphone says whoa |
| 1:45.1 | you got a nice microphone he's zooming podcasting baby's zooming you know somebody's a podcaster when |
| 1:49.8 | they have a nice microphone i was going to say you guys are more confident than i am i hide this thing |
... |
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