AI Billionaires Want to Control EVERY Aspect of Your Life | Aaron Bastani Meets Karen Hao

It has been a year since Aaron Bastani first met with AI investigative journalist Karen Hao, to discuss her book Empire of AI. A year is a long time, in the fastest growing sector on the planet. To bring us up to date, Aaron and Karen sat down again to discuss the major shifts in the empire – and their impacts on us all. Billions of people now use, AI as it has become more integrated into our lives, from chatbots, Google searches, predictive text, and beyond. At the same time, there has been a groundswell of fear and even anger about the arrival of the most disruptive technology of the 21st century: its impact on jobs, its use of resources, and the reckless behaviour of its billionaire founders. What have been the changes at the top of the major AI companies: OpenAI, Google, xAI and Anthropic? As Elon Musk approaches trillionaire status, how is he making this much money? What impact is the rollout of AI at such speed and scale having on the economy? What forms of resistance to this form of AI are emerging? And why are billionaires all choosing to build their bunkers in New Zealand? Empire of AI (2025) by Karen Hao is out in paperback from Penguin Books. 00:00 Introduction 03:17 Global Anxiety About AI 04:22 What’s Changed in AI in the Last Year? 09:29 Are Chatbots Unethical? 12:27 The AI Supply Chain 14:32 AI Bosses Know They Are Causing Harm but Don’t Care 17:47 How Top AI Bosses Think 20:06 Why Are Billionaires Building Bunkers in New Zealand? 21:35 The World’s First Trillionaire & AI’s Impact on Inequality 25:20 Meeting People Who are Struggling and Afraid Because of AI 29:16 Karen’s Personal Journey: Losing Then Discovering Hope & Empowerment 35:23 Are We Being Good Ancestors? 37:47 What Happens When OpenAI Floats on the Stock Market? 39:56 Does OpenAI’s Sam Altman Deliberately Use Chaos as a Strategy? 42:58 How Has Sam Altman Changed Over Time? 45:48 Can Elon Musk Put Data Centers in Space? 50:57 Are Anthropic Really the Good Guys of AI? 53:56 Why do the AI Bosses Hate Each Other? 55:50 Another “Rare” Intervention from Tony Blair 57:37 Larry Ellison & Oracle 59:01 How the AI Industry Is Capturing US Politics 1:04:26 How the AI Lobbying Machine Works 1:11:35 The AI Resist List: How People Are Fighting Back Buy tickets to Downstream IRL 'Can Capitalism Be Fixed?' with Mariana Mazucato here: https://novaramedia.com/events/downst... Sign up for the Downstream newsletter, for an exclusive bonus interview with Karen Hao, here: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters/t... Support our work: http://novara.media/support Buy Novara Media merch: https://shop.novaramedia.com/