Karen Hao

Karen Hao is a technology journalist known for long-running coverage of artificial intelligence and its social consequences. Her reporting focuses on accountability, labor conditions, environmental impacts, and the concentration of power inside major tech institutions. In Empire of AI, she draws on extensive research and hundreds of interviews to map the human conflicts, governance breakdowns, and global supply chains behind frontier AI development.

Hao’s style combines investigative detail with cultural analysis, aiming to make complex technical and political dynamics understandable without stripping them of their moral stakes. Her work is often described as accessible and deeply reported, and it has also attracted debate because it challenges the heroic narratives that commonly surround Silicon Valley and AI progress.