On June 2nd we’re excited to host two of the sharpest thinkers on tech power: Columbia law professor and former FTC Chair Lina Khan will join Karen Hao for a conversation about AI at an event to celebrate the launch of Karen’s new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s Open AI.

Karen Hao is an award-winning journalist covering artificial intelligence. She was the first journalist to ever profile OpenAI and wrote a book, EMPIRE OF AI, about the company and the AI industry for Penguin Press. Previously, Karen was a foreign correspondent at The Wall Street Journal focused on AI & China, and a senior editor at MIT Technology Review. Her work has 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.” Karen started her career as an application engineer at the first startup to spin out of Google[x]. She received a B.S. in mechanical engineering and minor in energy studies from MIT.

Lina Khan served as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission from June 15, 2021 to January 20, 2025. Khan got her start in antitrust as a business reporter and researcher examining consolidation across markets, from airlines to chicken farming. While at the FTC, Khan focused on exercising the full suite of the FTC’s statutory authorities, regularly engaging with and hearing from the public, and ensuring the agency is updating its tools and skillsets to tackle new market realities and next-generation challenges. Priority initiatives included reinvigorating antitrust and consumer protection enforcement, tackling noncompete clauses, protecting people’s sensitive data from unchecked surveillance, and taking on illegal conduct that deprives Americans of access to affordable, high-quality healthcare.

Prior to joining the FTC, Khan served as counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. She is presently an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School.

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