Technology
What are they saying about AI at San Francisco Tech Week?
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Tech workers gathered in San Francisco this week to talk about the opportunities they see for their industry, their mixed feelings about AI, and the high cost of living in the Bay Area.
It’s a boom time in Silicon Valley because of artificial intelligence. But a lot of people there worry about how long it’s going to last. NPR tech correspondent John Ruwitch went into the belly of the beast, so to speak, at an event known as San Francisco Tech Week. Hi, John.
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: Hey there.
ROSE: So what is Tech Week? And what were you looking to find out there?
RUWITCH: So this is a week of events around the city, dozens each day. They’re nominally linked to the technology and startup economy that Silicon Valley’s known for. It’s happening now. It’s been going on for a few years. It’s sponsored by the big tech investment firm Andressen Horowitz and a bunch of other companies.
And the events range from panel discussions with company founders to early morning cold plunges in the San Francisco Bay. There was even a networking event where you could get microchips painted onto your fingernails so that you could just tap on a phone and send someone your contacts. I came to get a sense of what people right in the thick of it all are thinking about and concerned about at this time when we’re all kind of wondering where AI is taking us.
ROSE: So to use a technical industry term here, what were the vibes like?
RUWITCH: The vibes, yeah – you know, I heard people talk a lot about how things right now feel like a gold rush. Here’s Drew Glover. He’s the founder of a venture firm called FGV Capital that invests in early-stage tech companies.
DREW GLOVER: AI’s created a boom and a revolution that I think is really exciting. Every tech business that’s being created right now is an AI business, even if that’s not necessarily the industry they’re trying to impact.
RUWITCH: Yeah, I just heard over and over again that AI is going to make everything cheaper. It’s going to make stuff more accessible to us. It’s going to free us all up so we have better lives. I came across a guy, you know, who made a company with AI that helps people find street vendors for food and helps those small-time vendors find customers. There’s a guy building an app to help motorcycle riders locate fun roads to cruise on. There’s a founder who talked about using AI to make it easier for companies to do performance reviews. I think we can all see why that might be a compelling idea. You name it, people are building it with AI now.
ROSE: Did anyone you spoke to raise any concerns about AI?
RUWITCH: Yeah. You know, if you scratch the surface, you do hear some ambivalence about it. Here’s Capri Wheaton, who works at an AI startup studio.
CAPRI WHEATON: It’s definitely a weird period of time. I think there’s a lot of optimism and, yeah, a lot of scary thoughts as well in terms of, is this an AI bubble? How long is all this momentum and hype going to last for? Is this all sustainable?
RUWITCH: There is a massive amount of money being invested in AI right now. There’s a tiny number of gigantic companies at the top of the heap, like OpenAI and Anthropic, with huge valuations. Everybody seems to be using their products. So there is this concern within the industry that it’s dependent on a handful of companies and that flood of money that’s really gushing through the industry right now. But what if it dries up? I mean, that’s the worry. Could it be like the .com bubble that burst around the year 2000?
ROSE: What about all the scary news about AI agents going rogue or posing an existential threat?
RUWITCH: Yeah, the scary stuff – I asked about that. I got the sense that a lot of people in tech here at Tech Week see things differently. Here’s startup founder Joe McCann.
JOE MCCANN: If you’re in the middle of nowhere, you’re getting the headline of, it’s going to take our jobs, it’s going to kill everybody. Here, I think you can see that there’s a lot of really great people trying to do other really interesting things with AI in ways that you kind of only see when you’re in it.
RUWITCH: He said, AI’s a disruptive technology and, like the Industrial Revolution, it’s going to disrupt things and unlock a lot of progress.
ROSE: OK, but how are people talking about things like job security and the cost of living?
RUWITCH: Right, these are real problems. There was actually a panel that I went to, a panel discussion on basically how to afford living in San Francisco because it’s become so expensive. You know, people in the industry are pretty well compensated, but there’s a real sort of sense that they’re worried about how long these jobs are going to last, especially as AI gets better at things like coding. Brian Hoang is a software engineer.
BRIAN HOANG: Coding itself, like writing out code – it might be dead. But, like, software engineering, I think, is still pretty alive for at least a few more years.
RUWITCH: So that highlights the sense that there’s uncertainty in the future. And if San Francisco has known one thing – and it’s become familiar with it since the actual gold rush – it’s that boom-bust cycle.
ROSE: For sure. That is NPR’s John Ruwitch at Tech Week in San Francisco. Thank you, John.
RUWITCH: You bet, Joel.
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