My Internet: Karen Hao
The ‘Empire of AI’ author is seriously considering getting rid of her smartphone.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Some weeks, we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Karen Hao, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal who now writes for The Atlantic and leads a Pulitzer Center program that trains journalists on how to cover AI. Her new book, Empire of AI, is a New York Times best seller that
called “a real feat of reportage and cultural analysis and economic and social critique.” Karen loathes using the term AGI and says that as long as there’s no federal data privacy law, all social media companies are national security threats. —Nick
EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?
KAREN HAO: Begrudgingly! These days, I try to do so sparingly, just when I have new writing or other professional updates to share. It still seems like one of the best platforms for reaching audiences outside the US.
EMBEDDED: Do you post on Bluesky, Threads, or Substack’s Notes? Why?
KAREN HAO: I cross-post my tweets on BlueSky, which has gained the most traction among some of the audiences I hope to reach with my work.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
KAREN HAO: I deleted my Instagram. Zero regrets.
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
KAREN HAO: A lot of late night shows or podcasts run by former late night hosts. Also love a good celebrity interview promoting a new movie.
EMBEDDED: Will you miss TikTok if it is eventually banned, and if so, what will you miss most about it?
KAREN HAO: Nope, never got into TikTok. I downloaded it, lost 30 minutes of my life falling deep into its algorithmic hole, got spooked, deleted it.
EMBEDDED: Is TikTok a national security threat if it remains under Chinese ownership?
KAREN HAO: The fact that the US doesn’t have a federal data privacy law makes all social media companies, regardless of ownership, a national security threat. Case in point: Cambridge Analytica.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
KAREN HAO: Newspapers (NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, Guardian, etc); business & tech outlets (The Information, Business Insider, Bloomberg, etc); magazines (The Atlantic, WIRED, New Yorker, New York, etc.); smaller beloved pubs (Rest of World, MIT Tech Review, 404Media, etc.); various newsletters; AI Twitter, BlueSky, and LinkedIn.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
KAREN HAO: Lots of doomscrolling. I wish I didn’t do this!
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?
KAREN HAO: Two that I signed up for recently and am enjoying: Blood in the Machine by
EMBEDDED: Do you believe that the “artificial general intelligence” and “superintelligence” that many AI boosters have warned of actually pose a risk to humanity?
KAREN HAO: These terms are really poorly defined, so I generally loathe using them at all. But if we’re talking about the idea that AI could go rogue and destroy humanity? No. This is a huge distraction from what I see as the greatest possible catastrophe on the horizon, detailed in my book Empire of AI: Silicon Valley’s use of the race to build “AGI” as justification to seize an extraordinary amount of data, land, capital, computing power, energy, and water to the dramatic erosion of data privacy, intellectual property, labor rights, economic opportunity, environmental progress, social cohesion, trust, truth, and, ultimately, democracy itself.
EMBEDDED: Are smartphones and social media bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?
KAREN HAO: Much more Jonathan Haidt. I no longer have personal social media accounts, only professional ones. And I’ve recently started seriously considering getting rid of my smartphone. My laptop has everything I need and doesn’t follow me everywhere from my bedside table to the dinner table to meetings with friends to the gym. I’d probably have a much healthier relationship with technology and more space for deep thinking if I kept to just the device that mainly stays at my desk.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
KAREN HAO: Mostly through friends and family.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
KAREN HAO: AOC. She’s a genius.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
KAREN HAO: Rebecca F. Kuang. She’s also a genius.
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
KAREN HAO: Trevor Noah. Witty, discerning, empathic. Just a stand-up guy.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
KAREN HAO: I listened to the Empire podcast from William Dalrymple and Anita Anand a lot while writing my book as a kind of spiritual and intellectual companion to my work.
EMBEDDED: When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
KAREN HAO: Every year I think to myself, “I’m finally going to learn how to dress like an adult.” I open up Pinterest, spend hours creating a moodboard of the style and vibes I’m going for, feel satisfied, close Pinterest. Then go back to wearing what I’ve always worn.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
KAREN HAO: 💗 Super mega love, support, gratitude, joy, happiness.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
KAREN HAO: I do sometimes with people who send voice notes to me—and I really love receiving them.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
KAREN HAO: Signal. It keeps my data secure, and the CEO Meredith Whitaker is the kind of visionary we need to point us toward a new way of developing technologies in the public interest.
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
KAREN HAO: Careless People. Having covered Facebook, I thought I knew a lot of what there was to know about the company. But my god, there’s more.
Thanks Karen! Buy her book and follow her on X and BlueSky. 💗
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