AI NEWS PAGE DOSSIER
Silicon Valley engineer → AI reporter → OpenAI chronicler → author of Empire of AI.
Hao came out of MIT engineering and Silicon Valley, moved into data and technology journalism, became an early specialist on artificial intelligence, reported deeply on OpenAI before ChatGPT made it famous, then widened the beat into global labor, power, accountability, and the book-length history Empire of AI.
2018
After MIT mechanical engineering, application engineering at a Google[x] spinout, and reporting plus data-science work at Quartz, Hao moved into AI journalism at MIT Technology Review. The technical career became the reporting advantage.
RECEIPTS: Karen Haofirst-partyAAJA Studioreported
2019
Hao says she was the first journalist to profile OpenAI. Her reporting on the then much less famous lab began in 2019 and became an early close look at the tension between its founding mission and its growing ambitions.
RECEIPTS: Karen Haofirst-partyPenguin Random Housereported
2020
Pulitzer Center's biography notes that Hao won a Front Page Award in 2020 for co-producing the podcast In Machines We Trust while building a broader body of AI reporting.
RECEIPTS: Pulitzer Centerreported
Apr 2022
Hao's Pulitzer Center-supported AI Colonialism series traced data collection, labeling labor, surveillance, and algorithmic power across several countries, shifting the AI story from models alone toward the people and resources underneath them.
RECEIPTS: Pulitzer Centerreported
Apr 10, 2024
The Pulitzer Center launched the AI Spotlight Series with Hao as its lead, a global training program designed to teach reporters and editors how to investigate AI systems, companies, money, power, and impact.
RECEIPTS: Pulitzer Centerreported
May 20, 2025
Penguin Press published Empire of AI, Hao's book about OpenAI and the wider AI industry, turning years of reporting on the lab's growth, resource demands, labor, and power into a full-length account.
RECEIPTS: Penguin Random Housereported