UVA’s Digital Technology for Democracy Lab, The Sloane Lab, and the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences present “An Evening with Karen Hao” at Old Cabell Hall. This free event is open to the public – please reserve your seats by registering.

In Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI (Penguin Press, 2025), Karen Hao, a leading tech journalist and frequent contributor to The Atlantic, tells the behind-the-scenes story of how a cadre of the most powerful companies in human history is reshaping the world in its image. The first journalist to ever profile OpenAI, Karen’s insight has been called “excellent and deeply reported” by The New York Times. Empire of AI is a page-turning thriller, an “essential work of public education” (Shoshanna Zuboff), and a revelatory portrait of the people controlling AI technology. It is the jaw-dropping story of ambition and ego, hype and speculation, plunder and destruction, politics and labor, and, of course, money and power—a brilliant and deeply necessary look at the industry defining our era, and what the future holds.