A Look at OpenAI From 2019
Tech Review is re-running this story from 2019 with a new introduction,
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/19/1116614/hao-empire-ai-openai
It was written by probably the first journalist to get inside the secretive company for a few days of interviews. It didn't go well...
In 2019, Karen Hao, a senior reporter with MIT Technology Review, pitched me on writing a story about a then little-known company, OpenAI. It was her biggest assignment to date. Hao's feat of reporting took a series of twists and turns over the coming months, eventually revealing how OpenAI's ambition had taken it far afield from its original mission. The finished story was a prescient look at a company at a tipping point-or already past it. And OpenAI was not happy with the result. Hao's new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, is an in-depth exploration of the company that kick-started the AI arms race, and what that race means for all of us. This excerpt is the origin story of that reporting. - Niall Firth, executive editor, MIT Technology Review
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In February 2020, I published my profile for MIT Technology Review, drawing on my observations from my time in the office, nearly three dozen interviews, and a handful of internal documents. "There is a misalignment between what the company publicly espouses and how it operates behind closed doors," I wrote. "Over time, it has allowed a fierce competitiveness and mounting pressure for ever more funding to erode its founding ideals of transparency, openness, and collaboration."
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From the book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, by Karen Hao, to be published on May 20, 2025, by Penguin Press,...
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