We All Suffer From OpenAI’s Pursuit of Scale
On this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us, Karen Hao on the danger that Sam Altman poses.

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Paris Marx is joined by Karen Hao to discuss how Sam Altman’s goal of scale at all costs has spawned a new empire founded on exploitation of people and the environment, resulting in not only the loss of valuable research into more inventive AI systems, but also exacerbated data privacy issues, intellectual property erosion, and the perpetuation of surveillance capitalism.
Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist and the author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
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Paris Marx is joined by Karen Hao to discuss how Sam Altman’s goal of scale at all costs has spawned a new empire founded on exploitation of people and the environment, resulting in not only the loss of valuable research into more inventive AI systems, but also exacerbated data privacy issues, intellectual property erosion, and the perpetuation of surveillance capitalism.
Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist and the author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI.
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Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
What happens when a government goes all in on AI? It creates some huge vulnerabilities. Will Dunn joins Paris Marx to dig into how the UK government is using chatbots to write laws without public consultation and why it isn’t asking the hard questions about the risks of that growing reliance on US technology.
Will Dunn is the business editor at the New Statesman.
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