"The subject is an axle around which a certain kind of mind interminably spins. It turns out that I have more than a few acquaintances who have become AI People, but when I ask them about it, they launch into a theory they have or send me a paper they've written, and the abstraction of artificial intelligence layered onto the abstraction of money feels like listening to someone explain the rules of a card game no one wants to play."
"The kids I spend a little time with speak with disdain of B2B software and with respect for hard problems. They are accustomed to taking off their shoes and placing them in a pile in the entryway of every living space and every workspace, the division between the two having been completely effaced. They are hiring, or their AI agents are hiring, or they were themselves hired by a computer program simulating human intelligence."
San Francisco hosts a cohort of young AI-focused founders who blur the line between living and working, often sharing entryways and communal spaces. Many converts to AI respond with dense theories or papers, making the fusion of AI and finance feel abstract and tedious. The cohort values hard technical problems over B2B software and practices communal living rituals such as piling shoes at doorways. Hiring is mediated by humans or AI agents, and residents range from late teens to late twenties. Founders quantify the small probability their tools could destroy humanity as 'P(doom)'. One organizer converted rooms in a one-star hotel into a hacker house called Accelr8 to support aspiring founders during the AI boom.
Read at Intelligencer
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]