Karen Hao

Hao is the daughter of Chinese immigrant parents, and grew up in New Jersey.^[5] She is a native speaker of both English and Mandarin Chinese.^[2] She graduated from The Lawrenceville School in 2011.^[6] She then studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), graduating with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a minor in energy studies in 2015.^[7]

Hao is known in the technology world for her coverage of new AI research findings and their societal and ethical impacts. Her writing has spanned research and issues regarding big tech data privacy, misinformation, deepfakes, facial recognition, and AI healthcare tools.

In March 2021, Hao published a piece that uncovered previously unknown information about how attempts to combat misinformation by different teams at Facebook using machine learning were impeded and constantly at odds with Facebook's drive to grow user engagement.^[8][9][10] Upon its release, leaders at Facebook including Mike Schroepfer and Yann LeCun immediately criticized the piece through Twitter responses.^[11] AI researchers and AI ethics experts Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell responded in support of Hao's writing and advocated for more change and improvement for all.^[12]

Hao also co-produced the podcast In Machines We Trust, which discusses the rise of AI with people developing, researching, and using AI technologies.^[13] The podcast won the 2020 Front Page Award in investigative reporting.^[14]

Hao has occasionally created data visualizations that have been featured in her work at the MIT Technology Review and elsewhere. In 2018, her "What is AI?" flowchart visualization was exhibited as an installation at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.^[15]

She has been an invited speaker at TEDxGateway, the United Nations Foundation, EmTech, WNPR, and many other conferences and podcasts.^[16][17] Her TEDx talk discussed the importance of democratizing how AI is built.^[18]

In March 2022, she was hired by The Wall Street Journal to cover China technology and society, while being based in Hong Kong.^[19] She left the WSJ in 2023.

In May 2025, Hao released the book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI.^[20][21][22] The book became a New York Times Bestseller and was named a Book of the Year by the Financial Times.^[23] In December 2025, after criticism from readers, Hao issued a correction to her book where she had previously overestimated the water consumption of a data center in Chile compared to the community's water consumption by factor of 1,000, due to an error in a government document.^[24] In April 2026 the book won the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.^[25]