I am a bestselling author and award-winning reporter covering artificial intelligence. I was the first journalist to profile OpenAI and wrote a book, EMPIRE OF AI (Pengin Press, May 2025), about the company and the AI industry. It was an instant New York Times bestseller, Sunday Times bestseller, New York Times notable book, and winner of six awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.

I split my time freelancing, speaking, and working with incredible collaborators on interesting projects. I have produced short documentaries for More Perfect Union, co-hosted a BBC podcast called The Interface, written op-eds for the New York Times and The Guardian, and contributed to The Atlantic.

I sit on the board of AI Now, a research institute challenging and reimagining the current trajectory of AI development. I 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, and the AI Resist List, a project that counters Silicon Valley’s inevitability narrative by showcasing global grassroots movements holding it accountable.

Previously, I was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior AI editor at MIT Technology Review.

In 2025, Time magazine honored me 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.”

My 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.” It has been cited by Congress (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), featured in university curriculums, and remade into museum exhibits. My former weekly newsletter, The Algorithm, was named by the Webby Awards as one of the best newsletters on the internet in 2018.

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