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Los Angeles Times
21 hours ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
A new gold rush? How AI is transforming San Francisco
On a sunny day in San Francisco, along the city's waterfront, families dived into the wacky world of artificial intelligence inside the Exploratorium museum. Visitors made shadow puppets for AI to identify, used AI to generate songs, asked chatbots questions and faced off with AI in a game in which players tried to draw images that only humans would recognize. A giant robot hand moved around and people peered into a video game chip. They jotted down their hopes and worries about AI on cards displayed in the museum. Hope: AI will cure cancer. Worry: People will rely on AI to the point they can't think for themselves. 'It sort of breaks down those guardrails, those big walls that people have put up around AI, and allows them to have a conversation with somebody else,' said Doug Thistlewolf, who manages exhibit development at the Exploratorium. Art. Office Space. Billboards. Protests. The AI craze has intensified in San Francisco, spreading through work and social life in what some have described as a new gold rush. The AI boom, coupled with the election of new Mayor Daniel Lurie, has also infused the city with optimism — tinged with anxiety. Some worry about the city's high cost of living, and whether AI will replace workers as tech layoffs continue. For years, Silicon Valley has been at the center of innovation with some of the world's valuable tech companies such as Meta, Google, Apple and Nvidia locating their massive headquarters south of San Francisco. AI's rise, though, has shone a bright spotlight on San Francisco, home to multibillion-dollar companies such as OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Perplexity and Databricks. AI has long played a big role in consumer technology, helping to recommend social media posts, translate languages and power virtual assistants. But the popularity of OpenAI's ChatGPT — a chatbot that can generate text, images and code — set off a fierce race to propel technology that touches industries from media to healthcare. Companies are battling it out for talent, offering lucrative compensation to recruit top researchers and leaders, while investments in AI companies have surged. In the first half of 2025, venture capital funding for AI companies in the San Francisco Metro area surpassed $29 billion — more than double the amount during the same period in 2022, data from PitchBook shows. As of Aug. 5, VC deals for AI startups in the area, which includes San Francisco, Oakland and Fremont, made up 46.6% of funding for U.S. AI companies this year. Exactly how this frenzy will shape the future of San Francisco, home to cable cars and robotaxis, remains to be seen. Ask ChatGPT what SF will look like in 10 years and it generates an image of the city's skyline with futuristic architecture and flying saucers next to the Golden Gate Bridge. AI has been a 'bright spot' in the city's economy, helping San Francisco to recover after retailers, office workers and some companies such as X (formerly Twitter) left the downtown area during and after the pandemic as remote work picked up. 'The economic impact is [AI companies] take more office space, they pay more taxes, they hire more people,' said Ted Egan, chief economist of the city and county of San Francisco. Over the past five years, AI-related companies have leased more than 5 million square feet of San Francisco office space and the amount is projected to grow, according to CBRE, a real estate service and investment firm. The city's office vacancy rate of 35.8% in the first quarter would be cut in half if these companies take up 16 million square feet of office space by 2030. San Francisco resident Vijay Karunamurthy has seen the city's boom and bust cycles unfold over the last 25 years while working at startups and tech giants such as Google and Apple. In 2000, when he moved from Chicago to San Francisco for an engineering job at a data startup, he saw major business such as collapse during the dot-com crash. Fueled by social media's popularity, the city's tech sector came roaring back only to take a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the city is ascending yet again. Ambitious entrepreneurs, old and new, are advancing powerful artificial intelligence tools that could transform lives. 'That amount of energy being concentrated in San Francisco has just been huge for the city,' said Karunamurthy, 46, the former field chief technology officer at Scale AI, a data-labeling startup. 'It means every single night there's AI events, and if you go to a coffee shop, you'll run into people working on AI.' Still, there are plenty of AI skeptics. In late July, outside of OpenAI's headquarters in Mission Bay, a small group of protesters including a person dressed up as a robot held up signs that said 'AI will kill us all' and 'AI steals your work to steal your jobs.' Generative AI's ubiquity has forced educators to rethink what and how they teach students in the classrooms. Arno Puder, professor and chair of San Francisco State University's computer science department, said generative AI represents a historic 'paradigm shift.' The longtime San Francisco resident is equally excited, but also a little scared, about how it will affect labor. Over the last two years, he's seen student enrollment in computer science at the university drop amid tech layoffs and generative AI's rise. As coding assistants reshape computer science jobs, the university launched a new undergraduate certificate in generative AI for the fall of 2026. 'Generative AI is a different beast,' Puder said. 'That does make me worry a little bit, but if you ask me for a prediction on what services or what the world's going to look like in a few years from now, I don't know.' AI's rise has inspired the creation of new spaces throughout San Francisco where people can discuss technology's benefits and risks. Thistlewolf said creating the AI exhibit at the Exploratorium involved talking to workers and researchers from tech companies and universities. The exhibit, which runs through mid-September, took roughly a year and half to develop. Backed by Anthropic, the San Francisco company that developed the AI chatbot Claude, the exhibit aims to educate people about AI but doesn't shy away from the debate surrounding technology. San Francisco resident Martha Chesley, 77, came to the exhibit with her grandchildren. Living in San Francisco for 50 years, Chesley sees potential benefits from AI companies coming to the city. 'If it brings people and money, it's good for the city because right now we have a lot of closed storefronts,' she said. 'Maybe there would be more money also for housing being built.' Throughout the city, AI startups are broadcasting their mission loudly on billboards and ads displayed at bus stops and train stations. Messages include 'Stop Hiring Humans. To Write Cold Emails' and 'Droids ship software while you touch grass.' AI ads could also be spotted in the Mission district, a neighborhood deeply rooted in Latino culture and history. The area, filled with popular taquerias, colorful murals and a park with a view of the downtown skyline, has struggled with homelessness like other parts of the city. At a bus stop on 16th Street, an ad from AI startup Outset struck a positive tone: 'Listen to humans. Don't replace them.' Founded in downtown San Francisco in 2022, Outset created an AI interviewer so researchers could quickly gather feedback from more people to better understand customer needs and improve products. The company's 36-year-old chief executive, Aaron Cannon, said before the rise of ChatGPT, he and his co-founder experimented with AI systems that can generate and understand human language and saw its potential. 'I don't think either of us could have told you it was going to absolutely take over the world,' he said. The San Francisco resident said the city's talent pool also makes it an attractive location for startups. He declined to disclose its finances but said the company, which employs 15 and counts Microsoft among its clients, is 'growing fast.' Throughout San Francisco, founders and real estate companies have dubbed certain areas as AI hubs. Hayes Valley, a neighborhood with Victorian houses, boutique shops and trendy restaurants, bears the nickname 'Cerebral Valley,' a nod to the hacker houses and AI communities that popped up in the area. Jamestown, a real estate and investment company, markets the Northern Waterfront an emerging AI hub after leasing more than 43,000 square feet of office space to AI companies. Some of the startups work on AI loan servicing or AI-powered lip syncing technology. Located near public transportation, water and greenery, the fresh air and serene nature of the area has attracted AI entrepreneurs that want to collaborate in person, said Michael Phillips, principal and chairman of Jamestown. 'If you're working on these fast to market, highly competitive products,' he said, 'you really need to be together.'
San Francisco Chronicle
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Are you smarter than a computer? New Exploratorium exhibition puts AI to the test
If the Exploratorium's newest exhibition is already the most popular, it's also one of the quietest. 'Adventures in AI' puts visitors of all ages face-to-face with different forms of artificial intelligence, forcing them to confront their qualms and explore the various applications of the rapidly developing technology. But it does so with an uncharacteristic calm and quiet that contrasts from the rest of the museum's summertime buzz. Doug Thistlewolf, the waterfront museum's manager of exhibit development, attributes the vibe shift to how deeply it engrosses visitors. 'We really wanted to shape this show into something that was engaging for people (and) met them where their fears are or their excitement is,' he told the Chronicle. 'Everybody's kind of got a different entry point.' The show runs through Sept. 14, featuring 20 exhibits and eight artworks. Its range of hands-on experiences allow visitors of all ages to interact with AI, investigating ethical and environmental concerns and exploring the ways in which it can detect objects, engage in conversation and more. One challenges visitors to make shadow puppets for the technology to recognize, while another allows participants to train it with photos taken at the exhibition. 'I think it's a good way for everyone to get their hands wet in AI and (see) what it's all about,' East Bay resident Tim Wong, 60, said during a recent trip to the exhibition with his family. 'Especially for the younger kids, the term is thrown around a lot, and it's going to be a big part of their world when they grow up.' The exhibition is organized around a central plaza filled with AI-related pieces for visitors to play with, from a 9-foot-tall robotic hand to a giant thought-provoking distorted mirror. From there, it branches off into more in-depth topics such as social impacts and bias. Thistlewolf noted that 'Adventures in AI' has drawn a diverse array of demographics since opening last month, from families and children's summer camp groups to tech insiders and Gen Zers. While many of the adults, like Wong, have expressed excitement about the technology, some of the Exploratorium's younger visitors weren't as convinced. 'I think it's pretty cool how the AI can think of things, but I think it definitely needs to work on its thinking of concepts,' Luna Fischer Loya, 11, said during a trip to the museum with her grandmother. 'Sometimes I get a little intimidated by it.' Similarly skeptical of the technology, even after exploring the exhibition, 10-year-old Bruce Black admitted that AI is still 'a little bit scary' to him. 'It made me feel a little uncertain of what's going to happen,' he said after exploring a few exhibits. 'There are people saying that AI would take over the world, and I'm like, 'If that's going to happen, why am I using it? '' The Sacramento resident visited the Exploratorium with his mother, 34-year-old Abbie Black, who had a more positive outlook. She noted that as long as AI doesn't replace humans' jobs and is used for 'making life easier,' she's all for it. Thistlewolf acknowledged the broad range of feelings toward AI. 'There's a lot of nuance,' he said, adding that at the very least, he hopes that visitors can leave 'Adventures in AI' with a more thorough understanding. 'We're not trying to force people to change their opinion,' he said. 'We know that people are afraid,' he added. 'But they're probably afraid of the wrong thing.'
