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

The Prologue opens with a fast-paced day-by-day summary of the events surrounding the firing of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI, a leading American AI company, and his reinstatement only a few days later. On November 17, 2023, the OpenAI board met with Altman and announced he was being fired, citing concerns about his trustworthiness, honesty, and transparency. OpenAI employees were shocked, and many rallied for Altman to be reinstated. The board unsuccessfully attempted to allay the employees’ fears. A number of high-profile employees quit in protest. There was pressure for the board to resign instead. Negotiations between the board and Altman’s allies continued. Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s biggest backers, supported Altman’s return and publicly stated that Altman and any OpenAI employees who quit in protest would be hired at Microsoft. On Tuesday, November 21, exhausted by negotiations, the board said Altman could return to his position as CEO and agreed to a partial board shakeup. By January 2024, OpenAI was valued at $86 billion.

Author Karen Hao sees the conflict over control of OpenAI as representative of a bigger challenge: “How do we govern artificial intelligence?” (12) She argues that the answers to this question given by Sam Altman and other Silicon Valley actors like Anthropic replicate the monopolizing and exploitative systems of imperial colonialism.