Karen Hao

You could imagine if most climate scientists were bankrolled by the fossil fuel companies, we wouldn't get a clear picture of the climate crisis.

So by monopolizing that expertise, not only can they censor and control what AI research is even produced in the world for the public.

They also can then go to a policymaker, go to the public and say, you don't know what you're talking about because we're the only ones that can see what's actually happening.

And this is a crucial lever of power that they use.

to ensure that there continues to be no democratic checks on their continued expansion.

Yeah.

to deliver us somewhere.

And I think this is the reason why, you know, there are people that genuinely believe in these narratives within the industry.

And also they recognize that it's rhetorically useful to use this kind of language and to put the responsibility and the onus on the thing that they're creating, not themselves.

It's because ultimately, if things go wrong, it's because of the model.

And it alleviates scrutiny from them and their actions.

And the fact that as they say, it's a magic trick.

They're saying, like, focus on this hand where we're trying to build the AGI.

And on the other hand, they're literally complaining.

amassing more capital than any actor in history and more land and more energy data water minerals labor you know it's just like they are trying to redirect us from the real issue at hand and on that um we will return to this theme of why they are like empires rather than companies just after this

Yes, I do.

And it's because the parallels between empires of old and empires of AI are so much more...

striking.

So fundamentally, their empire is because they're enormously scaled corporations that are accruing their value and their concentration of power through the dispossession of the majority.

But when you look at the tactics of how they go about doing that, I mean, I already talked about the monopolization of knowledge production and their exercise of power by just convincing everyone else, you don't know what you're talking about.