Empire of AI

Empire of AI reframes artificial intelligence not as a neutral technological breakthrough, but as a continuation of older imperial logics. Karen Hao traces how contemporary AI systems are built on extractive practices: the mining of natural resources, the exploitation of invisible human labor, and the appropriation of cultural and linguistic data—often from communities least empowered to resist.

For American Cyborg, this book reaffirms that intelligence is never abstract or placeless. Every model is grounded in land, energy, bodies, and histories. Data centers consume water; training datasets encode power; “automation” obscures the humans who label, moderate, and maintain the system. AI, Hao argues, does not merely reflect inequality—it scales it.

June functioned as a reckoning month. Coming after the optimism and irony of earlier AI texts, Empire of AI forced the reader to confront the cost of believing that machines can govern more fairly than people. The book clarified why stewardship—not efficiency—must be the ethical frame moving forward. It also offers a moral boundary: a recognition that any future intelligence worth cultivating must be accountable to land, labor, and life, rather than empire.