This author seems to have trouble distinguishing between things she doesn't like and far-right. I don't think downtown SF is "exalt" with far-right inhabitants, and given the largest AI firms are run by a gay man, climate man, and a company who build their brand on left-wing "alignment" I don't think the industry is "exalt" among the right either.
Author makes some good points though, I think many of us are feeling a bit of AI fatigue. There's so many platforms and services available now, and a large group will likely be vaporware soon as the market battle plays out.
I'll admit these "far right" labels don't hold much weight, usually just a way to expose yourself (the author here). But I agree with much of the overall sentiment of the article. The AI hype feels a bit dystopian and I say that as someone who has been heavily using LLMs since 2023.
They're very useful but we also have to ask ourselves what the world will look like if we automate everyone out of a job.
... that's scary, because the old one was pretty damned sinister.
Everything that exists now is just a product of what was. You don't have a bunch of people acting as religious fanatics with AI replacing God unless there was a real culture that was okay with that to begin with.
The AI story is inherently dystopian. I don't think it says one iota about the SF tech scene, that's more defined by the people in the city than the output of advertising dollars.
From where I'm sitting (SoMa for coming up on two years) the city is still relatively empty compared to past booms where apt. hunting involved bidding wars. But RTO pushes are clearly progressing, albeit slowly.
Personally I prefer it empty, billboards are easy enough to ignore.
We might be nostalgically forgetting the dystopian things setup during the 2010s. Social media in its modern form comes out of the 2010s. Feed-based engagement meant to keep you clicking and angry. Not to mention the modern corporate surveillance regime we just accept now. These companies knew it then, but ignore evidence of the harm done.
I do agree SF and the Bay Area have lost their allure and there are now much better places to live with opportunity and culture in tech. I don’t fully agree with the AI focus of the article. Yes it’s a bubble and the billboards are depressing, but comical if you view in the context of companies trying to out grift each other for your $$. However it wasn’t that long ago that the same billboards were saying everything would be on the blockchain now and that didn’t turn out so well.
I’d say the main sad thing is once the Bay Area was taken over by VC bros in fleece vests and mega corps it lost its soul. In some ways the place became the thing it started out fighting against, and so have many of its companies. Eg Salesforce started as the rebel solution to big bloated clunky tech, and now Salesforce is the big bloated clunky tech that a new generation groans at using.
SF turning into an almost literal dumpster fire hasn’t helped as any good “hub” also needs a clear downtown, and most folks actively avoid going into SF these days.
Whatever tech scene SF may have had died with the dotcom 1.0 collapse. What has existed since then is various forms of ad and surveillance web apps masquerading as something more interesting.
Actual SV always was and remains much more interesting, though perhaps less so than the 90s heyday. The fact the associated vibe difference is so perfectly demonstrated by the state of their airports is quite brilliant.
It makes me sick when I think how I have wasted my life in tech. If I had it to do over again, I would have done almost anything else. Spending most of your life rotting in front of a screen, knowing what you are doing is only helpful to a small group of people who don't care about you and you will never meet or know, ephemeral, and for what? Eventually as you get older, your "passion" for learning new things just for the sake of learning wanes and you start to see tech for it really is, and all new tech starts to look the same. If you're around long enough you'll be burned and screwed by the aggressive personalities the industry attracts.
I got into tech because I wanted to help make the world better, not worse. I can confidentially say after working in the industry for over 20 years, that it doesn't do that. That's not what it is. It's not what it's ever been about.
Almost everyone I know in tech is not happy, and works non-stop, expected to give their all for a company that could fire them tomorrow for no reason. They have been doing this for years. If anything good comes from AI, maybe it will be a release? A release from the hell of being chained to a laptop screen for most of our lives?
Out of all evil things that come out of SF in last decade (millions dead, countries ruined), AI does not even crack top ten. People are just upset because it made THEIR jobs obsolete.
I think there's something to what the author says about the shift from mission-driven startups to naked greed, but I don't think I would have put it that way.
Over the last two decades the startup scene has gone from trying to improve nearly everybody's lives at very low cost to consumers (ad-supported services like maps and email) to trying to improve the lives of the upper middle class with debatable impacts on everyone else (gig economy stuff) to something whose most obvious application is destroying jobs (ai).
That's a pretty quick shift from utopian to dystopian rhetoric, and people who bought the line are right to find that jarring.
The AI boom replaced the SaaS/Gig boom. We no longer have a dozen large caps in hyper growth at the same time and market conditions are less profligate so the hiring market is different https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Mm40
Gig work was yesterday's punching bag, but I guess we're nostalgic for it now.
> Overall, it feels like we’ve drifted past a point of no return
> What these tech oligarchs are ultimately telling us, dear friend, is that they simply don’t care about us
They never did. Anyway what else would you expect regarding the ads? The marketing people are just trying to get attention in an agressive manner (and it's working). This angle wouldn't be necessary if the AI was actually worth a damn for the proposed use case and sold itself.
It's actually really funny to see the last gasps before another AI winter. There is a future for LLMs, but it's probably customer engagement chatbots. Beyond replacing customer service, but also other junk people usually ignore like marketing surveys and other feedback.
SV and SF are a huge mouse trap. And Intellectual Ego is the cheese.
You are indeed "building the future" (mind as a simple cogwheel, for sure you are not the one calling the shots in terms of products) but unlike the industrial revolutions that happened through the centuries there is no quality of life advantage of being near the epicenter of it all.
Each and every product is rolled out globally and in zero time, so a person from the opposite side of the world say Bali gets to enjoy the same product in a far better environment as far as quality of life, cost of life etc, plus they didn't even have to build the thing at all! They just get to use it, best of both worlds.
And although they are not at the frontier of tech and human advancement I imagine they own their business and they get to call the shots on how the gym/bakery/scooter renting is run
The only localized things which are only availible in SV are the "autonomous vehicles" which as of now are absolutely the most blatant failure of tech industry in this century considering that they kill occupants on a daily basis.
I expect people who currently populate SV to either wise up and recognize they are in a mouse trap or simply make the leap into an even higher intellectual ego dimension of theoretical physics and mathematics which can be done from everywhere and either way at that point SV would just unravel
In tech circles there is a naive utopianism which comprises the "good intentions" currently paving the road to hell.
I was just at a talk where they had "AI experts" judge a startup pitch for an AI call center company. None of them could admit that the obvious business model (bill the client based on number of tokens / seconds) would make customer outcomes much worse (by incentivizing the bot to keep the customer on the phone as long as possible and even encourage them to call back). But they refused to admit, or even consider, that business models can be exploitative and full of perverse incentives. These are people at the head of efforts at big-name tech companies and they're too caught up in the dazzle.
They won't accept that they are the ones making an entire industry available to grifters by couching all their language in this hope-and-change idealism. Or maybe we're watching how otherwise well-intentioned people can become grifters when they aren't able to reflect on their goals and their actions.
Took me a minute to parse the headline. I thought it was going to be about dystopian science fiction replacing the old space opera stuff, though that already happened decades ago.
The tech scene in SF and the Bay Area at large was taking its last breath in 2015. When I arrived in SF in 2007, it was, in retrospect, already on its way out. But you could still walk down Mission in SOMA and overhear people talking about Apache configuration, witness technical team meetings in Yerba Buena Gardens, or run into the same people from another company's engineering team at the rotating schedule of bespoke coffee places (if the online camera someone setup across the alley from Blue Bottle indicated it was to busy, Special Xtra was the closer alternative). In 2015, South Park was waning as a startup office Mecca. Overhearing technical discussions and interviews at coffee shops and bars was replaced with overhearing discussions about pitch decks and VC meetings.
By 2015, the industry was fully infected with finance bros drawn to "easy VC money". This when we got non-viable startups like juicero, flower delivery, or one that would pick up your mail and scan it. Companies like WeWork and Uber being tech companies because they have an "app" made everyone think all you needed was an app to be a tech company, and having an app was defacto required to get VC investment.
The trends have always been evident from the billboards you'd see in the city and along 101. They have become more homogeneous with AI content more recently, but the blockchain/Bitcoin cycle was pretty homogeneous too.
I don't know that's there more far-right. But there is less of the free-spirit hippy branding (which was riding on 60s and 70s nostalgia anyway). Mention going to Burning Man and people say "Really?" rather than "Cool". The people who got rich over a decade ago got older.
The advertising/billboards do reflect/are the zeitgeist. There are conversations about working at an AI startup or how their pitch is based on AI at the coffee shop I frequent, which is outside SOMA/FiDi (and in view of the GGB). I don't think it's more sinister, SF still feels like California, at least in terms of the coastal relaxed attitude and hope if not in terms of being a big tech draw. Thanks to COVID, coming to the Bay Area to work in tech isn't required, or expected, anymore, which makes all the narrowly focused billboards seem odd: who are they advertising to other than other AI startups?
It's always been like that at the top but starry eyed nerds were able to delude themselves into believing that it wasn't so. Now the veil is gone and people see how evil it really is and don't care because the money is right. Although I can't blame people, I made my money all the same.
The SF 'tech scene' was already a joke in 2014, when a TV show satirized it for six seasons. The city used to be known for art, counter-culture, free expression. It turned into tech bros telling themselves they were 'saving the world' only to get rich off of bloated salaries, "exiting" web and mobile apps, cryptocurrency. The gentrification, stupidly expensive real estate/rent/restaurants, crime, and homelessness, were the warts on the pimpled ass of a city run over by 'tech people'. And the endless supply of free money from VCs made sure that the stream of shit never ran dry.
But now you're bothered? After 25 years of abuse that city has put up with, and all the evil it's pushed on the world, AI ads are your breaking point?
23 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 44.5 ms ] threadI'll admit these "far right" labels don't hold much weight, usually just a way to expose yourself (the author here). But I agree with much of the overall sentiment of the article. The AI hype feels a bit dystopian and I say that as someone who has been heavily using LLMs since 2023.
They're very useful but we also have to ask ourselves what the world will look like if we automate everyone out of a job.
Everything that exists now is just a product of what was. You don't have a bunch of people acting as religious fanatics with AI replacing God unless there was a real culture that was okay with that to begin with.
From where I'm sitting (SoMa for coming up on two years) the city is still relatively empty compared to past booms where apt. hunting involved bidding wars. But RTO pushes are clearly progressing, albeit slowly.
Personally I prefer it empty, billboards are easy enough to ignore.
I’d say the main sad thing is once the Bay Area was taken over by VC bros in fleece vests and mega corps it lost its soul. In some ways the place became the thing it started out fighting against, and so have many of its companies. Eg Salesforce started as the rebel solution to big bloated clunky tech, and now Salesforce is the big bloated clunky tech that a new generation groans at using.
SF turning into an almost literal dumpster fire hasn’t helped as any good “hub” also needs a clear downtown, and most folks actively avoid going into SF these days.
Actual SV always was and remains much more interesting, though perhaps less so than the 90s heyday. The fact the associated vibe difference is so perfectly demonstrated by the state of their airports is quite brilliant.
Edit to add: for those in denial, SF was HQ for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com
I got into tech because I wanted to help make the world better, not worse. I can confidentially say after working in the industry for over 20 years, that it doesn't do that. That's not what it is. It's not what it's ever been about.
Almost everyone I know in tech is not happy, and works non-stop, expected to give their all for a company that could fire them tomorrow for no reason. They have been doing this for years. If anything good comes from AI, maybe it will be a release? A release from the hell of being chained to a laptop screen for most of our lives?
Over the last two decades the startup scene has gone from trying to improve nearly everybody's lives at very low cost to consumers (ad-supported services like maps and email) to trying to improve the lives of the upper middle class with debatable impacts on everyone else (gig economy stuff) to something whose most obvious application is destroying jobs (ai).
That's a pretty quick shift from utopian to dystopian rhetoric, and people who bought the line are right to find that jarring.
The AI boom replaced the SaaS/Gig boom. We no longer have a dozen large caps in hyper growth at the same time and market conditions are less profligate so the hiring market is different https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Mm40
Gig work was yesterday's punching bag, but I guess we're nostalgic for it now.
> Overall, it feels like we’ve drifted past a point of no return
Every day.
They never did. Anyway what else would you expect regarding the ads? The marketing people are just trying to get attention in an agressive manner (and it's working). This angle wouldn't be necessary if the AI was actually worth a damn for the proposed use case and sold itself.
It's actually really funny to see the last gasps before another AI winter. There is a future for LLMs, but it's probably customer engagement chatbots. Beyond replacing customer service, but also other junk people usually ignore like marketing surveys and other feedback.
You are indeed "building the future" (mind as a simple cogwheel, for sure you are not the one calling the shots in terms of products) but unlike the industrial revolutions that happened through the centuries there is no quality of life advantage of being near the epicenter of it all.
Each and every product is rolled out globally and in zero time, so a person from the opposite side of the world say Bali gets to enjoy the same product in a far better environment as far as quality of life, cost of life etc, plus they didn't even have to build the thing at all! They just get to use it, best of both worlds.
And although they are not at the frontier of tech and human advancement I imagine they own their business and they get to call the shots on how the gym/bakery/scooter renting is run
The only localized things which are only availible in SV are the "autonomous vehicles" which as of now are absolutely the most blatant failure of tech industry in this century considering that they kill occupants on a daily basis.
I expect people who currently populate SV to either wise up and recognize they are in a mouse trap or simply make the leap into an even higher intellectual ego dimension of theoretical physics and mathematics which can be done from everywhere and either way at that point SV would just unravel
I was just at a talk where they had "AI experts" judge a startup pitch for an AI call center company. None of them could admit that the obvious business model (bill the client based on number of tokens / seconds) would make customer outcomes much worse (by incentivizing the bot to keep the customer on the phone as long as possible and even encourage them to call back). But they refused to admit, or even consider, that business models can be exploitative and full of perverse incentives. These are people at the head of efforts at big-name tech companies and they're too caught up in the dazzle.
They won't accept that they are the ones making an entire industry available to grifters by couching all their language in this hope-and-change idealism. Or maybe we're watching how otherwise well-intentioned people can become grifters when they aren't able to reflect on their goals and their actions.
By 2015, the industry was fully infected with finance bros drawn to "easy VC money". This when we got non-viable startups like juicero, flower delivery, or one that would pick up your mail and scan it. Companies like WeWork and Uber being tech companies because they have an "app" made everyone think all you needed was an app to be a tech company, and having an app was defacto required to get VC investment.
The trends have always been evident from the billboards you'd see in the city and along 101. They have become more homogeneous with AI content more recently, but the blockchain/Bitcoin cycle was pretty homogeneous too.
I don't know that's there more far-right. But there is less of the free-spirit hippy branding (which was riding on 60s and 70s nostalgia anyway). Mention going to Burning Man and people say "Really?" rather than "Cool". The people who got rich over a decade ago got older.
The advertising/billboards do reflect/are the zeitgeist. There are conversations about working at an AI startup or how their pitch is based on AI at the coffee shop I frequent, which is outside SOMA/FiDi (and in view of the GGB). I don't think it's more sinister, SF still feels like California, at least in terms of the coastal relaxed attitude and hope if not in terms of being a big tech draw. Thanks to COVID, coming to the Bay Area to work in tech isn't required, or expected, anymore, which makes all the narrowly focused billboards seem odd: who are they advertising to other than other AI startups?
But now you're bothered? After 25 years of abuse that city has put up with, and all the evil it's pushed on the world, AI ads are your breaking point?