Heidi McLaughlin’s Reviews > Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI > Status Update
Heidi McLaughlin
is 82% done
oooohhhhh now - finally - it’s getting good. Chapter 16 is where we hear about actual, specific, devious and dirty lies. The Prologue - and all the chapters up til now - had me thinking Hao was going to stay vague where we knew it was actually juicy and continue to feed us obnoxious levels of detail where it wasn’t.
— 13 hours, 19 min ago
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Heidi’s Previous Updates
Heidi McLaughlin
is 80% done
Enough about Annie already. Just why. I guess the point is, it’s potential proof Sam is heartless. But like why am I reading about ovarian cysts in a book about AI.
— May 07, 2026 05:54PM
Heidi McLaughlin
is 50% done
For anyone with Spotify who isn’t fascinated enough by AI lore to listen to 14+ hours, but still interested in how early gpt versions were trained, I’d recommend chapter 5 of Empire. Although when I tried to relay “the really good parts” to my 17yo while we were getting manicures today, she gave me that look that says, nobody cares. 🙄
— Apr 24, 2026 07:32PM
Heidi McLaughlin
is 15% done
I’m enjoying this, although I got sidetracked by the Claude Mythos System Card that dropped 4/7. It’s full of lore and reads like a tech bro gossip magazine. Lots of “who said what to whom.” A Grok-Opera, so to speak. 😆 Mira Murati comes across as a badass, and I didn't realize how central Shivon Zilis was. I’ve heard the names Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman enough times they’re etched in my brain.
— Apr 16, 2026 09:11PM
