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Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#31

Post by javajosh »

ben_jones wrote: post #20
Solvency wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, so there are AI meetups, which are finite sessions inside random cafes and businesses. But what about literally everything outside those meetups, like the horrifying human experience involved in the commute/walk/bike to and from said meetups?

A horrifying human experience is living in a war zone. It’s not having to move to a different bart car or endure a pan handler requesting money.

It's genuinely horrifying to realize that you both consider yourself a good person and yet recoil in disgust at people in great need. What is more painful than having your self-conception as an altruistic, moral person thoroughly undermined?

Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#32

Post by chpatrick »

smith7018 wrote: post #10
ramesh31 wrote: post #5

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that we're actually excited about something in tech again. Like for real, not in the "oh thats interesting now how can we make money" kind of way. It's been a long time, well over a decade since that's happened. The energy of SF in the late 2000s with the mobile boom was electric. Would be wonderful to experience that again.

You didn't feel it two years ago when crypto and Web3 were going to fundamentally change everything? /s (sorta..)

I think 99% of people who were into that just wanted to get rich quick when the crypto prices went apeshit. Recent AI feels like crazy sci-fi stuff on its own merit, whether it makes money or not.

Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#34

Post by peyton »

ben_jones wrote: post #20
Solvency wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, so there are AI meetups, which are finite sessions inside random cafes and businesses. But what about literally everything outside those meetups, like the horrifying human experience involved in the commute/walk/bike to and from said meetups?

A horrifying human experience is living in a war zone. It’s not having to move to a different bart car or endure a pan handler requesting money.

[dead]

Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#35

Post by AlexandrB »

thriftwy wrote: post #21
gumballindie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but this time the tech is based on stealing people's intellectual property. Hopefully this theft ends soon.

You cannot expect to be paid the same amount of money by the same size audience when the supply increases dramatically. Recording industry got this lesson 20 years back.

On the contrary, I think of AI as a form of shrinkflation. Consumers will probably pay roughly the same for inferior content. AI companies will capture the excess profits.

Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#36

Post by spacemadness »

smith7018 wrote: post #18
ramesh31 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You didn't feel it two years ago when crypto and Web3 were going to fundamentally change everything? That was the charlatan crap that took over in the last 10 years. Once upon a time, people actually cared about tech for it's own sake, and spent time geeking out and having meetups for the fun of it. Not everything was a "networking opportunity" to grift into a 6 figure PM role. I'd say 2014ish was about the time th…

Unfortunately, the same Crypto grifters have fully transitioned into AI thought leaders. We're going to have the same get-rich-quick schemes except this time it'll be VC money going to an extremely novel idea built on top of an OpenAI API instead of virtual real estate or hideous JPEGs of apes.

Walking by crypto meetups attended by people that mostly looked like buttoned up bankers sure was… something.

Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#37

Post by ramesh31 »

gumballindie wrote: post #13
ramesh31 wrote: post #5

I think the one thing we can all agree on is that we're actually excited about something in tech again. Like for real, not in the "oh thats interesting now how can we make money" kind of way. It's been a long time, well over a decade since that's happened. The energy of SF in the late 2000s with the mobile boom was electric. Would be wonderful to experience that again.

Yeah but this time the tech is based on stealing people's intellectual property. Hopefully this theft ends soon.

>Yeah but this time the tech is based on stealing people's intellectual property. Hopefully this theft ends soon.

It isn't necessarily or fundamentally, though. Public data was just the most accessible training corpus for the POC phase of adoption. Getty just released their first licensed model, and I suspect things like that will pick up steam as the tech has rapidly commoditized.

That being said we will probably end up with a supreme court ruling on this in the next five years, and I strongly believe it will come down on the side of fair use.

Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#38

Post by mgraczyk »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #7

https://archive.ph/SPkAx Summary: Meetups, especially AI meetups, are back in SF. Love to see it, but we're also seeing the same thing happen here in DC with the meetups I run, so it's not especially newsworthy?

One difference I would guess is scale. In SF there are AI meetups every day, and the big ones on weekends have literally hundreds of developers actively writing code all day. There are typically at least 2 events with >100 developers every Saturday and probably 20-30 of various smaller sizes.

Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#39

Post by synergy20 »

There is absolutely no way for me to do anything in SF, not even a short trip based on what my friends told me who went there for business or personal reason in recent years, shit happened to them and they felt helpless. When I do consulting I specifically avoid CA the whole state as well. I used to live both at SF and LA for a few months each, it was better back then.

Re: Growing AI presence is re-energizing parts of San Francisco

#40

Post by visarga »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #8

Happy to see SF revitalized by the work on these cool new challenges. Solving the hard problem of replacing all office workers with AI really requires in-person collaboration.

AI applications are much more than office work automation.
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