AI is upending the planet in real time, and its path of unchecked development threatens to erode democracy and return us to an age of empire, where a small group of companies dictates our future. It doesn’t have to be this way, says Karen Hao, a Silicon Valley engineer-turned-award-winning-journalist. She is the featured speaker at this Center for Business Ethics event on March 5, 2026, 5:00 to 6:30 p.m..
Hao’s epic and urgent book Empire of AI—an instant New York Times bestseller called a “heroic work” by Shoshana Zuboff (The Age of Surveillance Capitalism)—is the culmination of her years of insider access to OpenAI and her original reporting, spanning five continents. In captivating keynotes, packed with hard-won insights, she assembles the fullest picture yet of the most consequential tech arms race in history. She shows us just how thoroughly AI will alter society, and, more importantly, what role we can all play in actively shaping AI so that it benefits everyone. “The way we develop technology is now fundamentally broken,” Hao says. “But I truly believe that we can fix it.”