The Ideological Core Driving AI’s Expanding Influence
Every dominant power throughout history has been propelled by a foundational ideology-a set of beliefs that justifies its growth and expansion, even when the consequences contradict its original principles. For European colonial empires, this was Christianity, promising salvation while exploiting resources. In the modern era, the AI industry is driven by the vision of artificial general intelligence (AGI) as a transformative force “for the benefit of all humanity.” OpenAI stands at the forefront of this movement, championing AGI with a fervor that has reshaped the entire AI landscape.
OpenAI as a New Kind of Empire
Journalist Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI, draws a compelling parallel between OpenAI and an empire. She argues that OpenAI has amassed power surpassing many nation-states, wielding immense economic and political influence. This influence extends beyond technology, altering global geopolitics and everyday life, effectively “terraforming” the world in its image.
OpenAI defines AGI as “a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work,” promising to elevate humanity by boosting abundance, accelerating economic growth, and unlocking new scientific frontiers. However, these broad promises have driven rapid industry expansion, demanding vast computational resources, massive data harvesting, and energy consumption, often at the expense of safety and thorough testing.
Speed Versus Sustainability: The Race for AGI
Hao emphasizes that the relentless push for scale and speed was not the only path to AI advancement. Alternative approaches, such as refining algorithms to be more efficient and less resource-intensive, could have been pursued. Yet, the prevailing mindset prioritizes speed above all else-speed over safety, efficiency, and even exploratory research.
To maintain this rapid pace, OpenAI has relied on scaling existing methods by flooding models with more data and deploying ever-larger supercomputers. This “intellectually cheap” shortcut has set a precedent, compelling other tech giants to follow suit to remain competitive. Consequently, much of the world’s top AI talent has migrated from academia to industry, shifting the discipline’s focus from open scientific inquiry to corporate agendas.
Massive Investments and Shifting Goals
The financial stakes are staggering. OpenAI recently projected expenditures of $115 billion by 2029. Meta announced plans to invest up to $72 billion in AI infrastructure in 2025, while Google’s capital spending is expected to reach $85 billion this year, largely driven by AI and cloud expansion. Despite these enormous investments, the promised societal benefits remain elusive, while negative impacts-such as job displacement, wealth concentration, and the proliferation of harmful AI-generated content-continue to grow.
Human Costs Behind the Scenes
Hao’s research highlights troubling labor conditions in developing countries, where workers engaged in content moderation and data labeling are exposed to disturbing material, including child exploitation content, for wages as low as $1 to $2 per hour. These hidden human costs underscore the ethical complexities behind AI’s rapid development.
Alternative AI Models with Tangible Benefits
Contrasting the AGI race, Hao points to AI systems like Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold, which has revolutionized biology by accurately predicting protein structures. This breakthrough aids drug discovery and disease understanding without the massive environmental footprint or social harms associated with large-scale language models. AlphaFold’s success demonstrates that AI can deliver profound benefits without the collateral damage seen in other areas.
Geopolitical Narratives and Their Realities
The AI industry has often framed its progress as a strategic race against China, with Silicon Valley positioned as a liberalizing force on the global stage. However, Hao argues that this narrative has backfired: the technological gap between the U.S. and China is narrowing, and Silicon Valley’s influence has sometimes contributed to illiberal outcomes worldwide. Ironically, the primary beneficiary of this dynamic appears to be Silicon Valley itself.
Complexities of OpenAI’s Dual Structure and Impact Assessment
OpenAI’s hybrid structure-part nonprofit, part for-profit-complicates how it defines success and measures its impact on humanity. Recent developments, including a closer partnership with Microsoft and potential public offering, raise concerns about mission drift. Former OpenAI safety researchers worry that commercial success, exemplified by popular products like ChatGPT, is being conflated with genuine societal benefit.
The Danger of Ideological Blindness
Hao warns of the risks inherent in becoming so deeply invested in a mission that inconvenient realities are ignored. Even as evidence mounts that current AI developments cause significant harm, the overarching narrative of “benefiting humanity” is used to obscure these issues. This ideological tunnel vision poses a profound danger, disconnecting the industry from the real-world consequences of its actions.
