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

 
　　AI科技競賽正以前所未有的速度重塑世界，山姆・奧特曼（Sam Altman）曾對外宣稱，OpenAI成立的初衷，是為了制衡那些純商業導向、甚至可能帶來危險的勢力。然而隨著時間推移，OpenAI 憑藉 ChatGPT 的技術突破站上領導地位，奧特曼是否仍能堅守初心，不為權力或利益所動搖？
 
　　本書作者郝凱倫（Karen Hao）是屢獲殊榮的科技記者，曾任華爾街日報、麻省理工科技評論AI資深編輯，早在2019年，她便開始追蹤報導由奧特曼主導的 OpenAI。她將在書中公開這位關鍵人物，被自己一手打造的AI帝國所開除，又戲劇性重返權力核心的完整內幕。
 
　　如今，獲得微軟數十億美元資金奧援的 OpenAI，已成為AI競爭的主要參賽者 ；緊追其後的，則是人類歷史上最具價值、聲名顯赫的科技巨頭們。無論是 OpenAI 內部，或是同個產業裡的競爭者，都正承受著巨大的壓力。而這場關乎權力與金錢的競逐，正不斷扭曲整個科技界的判斷力。事實上，AI競賽的背後，隱藏了土地、水資源與廉價勞動力的競爭。AI科技競賽的終點在哪裡？將會付出什麼代價？恐怕連這些巨頭的領導者們也難以預測。
 
　　《AI帝國》（Empire of AI）不僅講述OpenAI的傳奇故事，揭露發生在矽谷上層科技指揮艙裡的內幕，也報導支撐AI產業發展所需的人力、環境成本，如何在底層衝擊世界的其他地區。書中所報導的真相，震撼人心。(文/博客來編譯)

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.

Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering the impacts of artificial intelligence on society and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. She leads the Pulitzer Center's AI Spotlight Series, a program training journalists around the world on how to cover AI, and sits on the AI advisory board of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She was formerly a foreign correspondent covering China's technology industry for the Wall Street Journal and a senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. Her work is regularly taught in universities and cited by governments. She has received numerous accolades for her coverage, including an American National Magazine Award for Journalists Under 30. She received her B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.