Karen Hao’s Empire of AI had been on my reading list for a while, but it wasn’t until David attended an Earthkeepers vs. AI Empires event in Zambia in the spring of 2026 that our engagement with it really kicked off. We both read the book, and discovered that Karen has such a deep, nuanced understanding, and is such a brilliant communicator about the technology — and the human decisions that have shaped existing AI and the consequences. It just made sense for us to be in conversation with her work, and to speak to how IDEMS’ current work, and the vision for where we’re going, is so relevant.

More than anything, I like this series because it presents a pro-active, buildable alternative to existing AI. I get really frustrated when people say, If this is what AI looks like, it’s just bad, we just shouldn’t have it. No, that’s not true. AI is just technology, a tool. It has the power to transform society, introduce breakthrough innovation that’s incredibly positive. But we have to design it toward those ends — and that can’t happen if we cede responsibility to the same handful of AI companies that are more focused on profits than public good.

We, the people, can build (with aligned funding, policy, teams, of course) better AI that isn’t exploitative or harmful. But we need to understand how it works and how it can work differently. We need to see the forces — the profit-centric funding incentives, the design choices, the teams and governance structures, the policy capture — that have created the current problematic direction of travel to move in a different direction, and create an alternative paradigm and practice of human-centered AI that benefits everyone.