Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao

In total, it presented four key warnings: First, large language models were growing so vast that they were generating an enormous environmental footprint, as found in Strubell’s paper. This could exacerbate climate change, which ultimately affected everyone but had a disproportionate burden on Global South communities already suffering from broader political, social, and economic precarity. Second, the demand for data was growing so vast that companies were scraping whatever they could find on the internet, inadvertently capturing more toxic and abusive language as well as subtler racist and sexist references. This once again risked harming vulnerable populations the most in ways like the wrongful arrest of the Palestinian man or as documented in Noble’s work. Third, because such vast datasets were difficult to audit and scrutinize, it was extremely challenging to verify what was actually in them, making it harder to eradicate toxicity or more broadly ensure that they reflected evolving social norms and values. Finally, the model outputs were getting so good that people could easily mistake its statistically calculated outputs as language with real meaning and intent. This would make people prone not only to believing the text to be factual information but also to consider the model a competent adviser, a trustworthy confidant, and perhaps even something sentient.