Why is OpenAI So Obsessed with AGI? Karen Hao (NYT bestselling author of "Empire of AI")

In her instant New York Times bestseller, Empire of AI , journalist Karen Hao distills more than a decade of in-depth research into a detailed account of OpenAI’s rise to power and why leadership at the company abandoned their promise to keep their research open. Karen joins Robb and Josh for a deep dive into murkiness surrounding what artificial general intelligence (AGI) actually represents and why AI colonialism and biased systems undercut efforts to create superintelligence that represents the vastness of human learning and experience. Drawing on the work of a nonprofit in New Zealand to preserve the Māori language, the trio also discuss why smaller, focused implementations that use better curated data might be more valuable to businesses trying to integrate AI into their operations. Buy Karen Hao’s book “Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI”: Learn more about Karen and here work: ---------- Support our show by supporting our sponsors! This episode is supported through partnership with OneReach.ai. Experience the runtime for AI agents — a turnkey private architecture and tools for building enterprise AI agents with guardrails. Use any AI models With enterprise grade security And avoid vendor lock-in. OneReach.ai’s award-winning AI agent orchestration platform meets the many requirements for seizing powerful new technologies in this pivotal moment. Learn more at onereach.ai/ai-agents . —--------- The revised and second edition of our bestselling book, Age of Invisible Machines, is available now on Amazon! Episode Credits: Robb Wilson — Resident expert Josh Tyson — Co-host Vishal Menon — Producer Mykhailo Lytvynov — Audio/Video Editor & Sound Engineer Daryna Moskovchuk — Graphic Design Alla Slesarenko — Copy Vira Prykhodko — Web Development Elias Parker — Executive Producer

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Why is OpenAI So Obsessed with AGI? Karen Hao (NYT bestselling author of "Empire of AI") is an episode from In Conversation with UX Magazine by Invisible Machines.

This episode is 54:36 long.

This episode was published on Aug 1, 2025.

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