Karen Hao is a bestselling author and award-winning reporter covering artificial intelligence. She was the first journalist to profile OpenAI and wrote a book, EMPIRE OF AI, about the company and the AI industry for Penguin Press.

She co-hosts the BBC podcast The Interface and freelance for publications like More Perfect Union and The Atlantic. She also co-created the Pulitzer Center’s AI Spotlight Series, a program that trains thousands of journalists around the world on how to cover AI.

Previously, she was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior AI editor at MIT Technology Review. She has been a fellow with the Harvard Technology and Public Purpose program, the MIT Knight Science Journalism program, and the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network.

In 2025, Time magazine honored her on its TIME100 AI list, writing, “Empire of AI instantly struck a cultural nerve…Hao is fundamentally shaping many people’s perceptions and understanding of the company at the center of the AI revolution.” Her work won an American Humanist Media Award in 2024, and an American National Magazine Award in 2022 for “outstanding achievement for magazine journalists under the age of 30.” Her former weekly newsletter, The Algorithm, was named by the Webby Awards as one of the best newsletters on the internet in 2018.

Her work has been cited by Congress, featured in university curriculums, and remade into museum exhibits. She regularly gives talks about AI or journalism around the world. She sits on the board of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism AI Advisory council.

In a past life, she was an application engineer at the first startup to spin out of Google. She received a B.S. in mechanical engineering and minor in energy studies from MIT.