I recently took the proverbial “tech” pill and decided, like many other twenty-somethings, to spend my summer in San Francisco with the intent of getting an inside track on the latest developments in techno-capitalism, self-improving AI technologies, and hyper-optimized wellness stacks. And as much as I have enjoyed building, connecting, and breathing all things AI, I have realized that the Bay itself may be a portal into what may be coming after the specter of self-improving intelligence becomes a reality.
It is a foregone conclusion that, regardless of what lies on the other side of the intelligence revolution (everlasting doom, human transcendence, or some third thing in between), society will never be the same. For as much as we have bemoaned the economic impacts of AI adoption, there has not yet been an actual realization of what this world will look like. Talk to one of your family members or friends who is not deeply immersed in either rationalism or technology, and they are likely to view the current explosion of AI as falling somewhere on the broad spectrum between a useful tool, like Google, and a scam, like NFTs.
This is largely because the major economic, sociopolitical, and intellectual catalysts associated with AI have been limited to the relatively small circle of Bay Area-adjacent denizens who are either working in the field or are direct beneficiaries of it. I use the word “adjacent” to describe individuals who are not geographically located in the Bay but are still beneficiaries of capital or influence originating from San Francisco and its neighbors.
During my daily travels and tribulations, I have come to a somewhat interesting realization: San Francisco, more so than any other technological hub or modernized city in the West, represents a microcosm and preview of what may become the reality of a post-capitalistic economy after the “singularity.” It is in San Francisco and its adjacent locales where you will encounter swaths of people without proper housing or food living directly beside billboards advertising the latest “hot” startups, hackathon winners, and exited founders. Only in a Bay Area café will you encounter discussions about AI policy, the singularity, and the ever-growing value of private compute taking place just a few steps away from demonstrations arguing against the further development of AI models.
Intelligence is close to being solved. This is a realization that I believe has not fully materialized among the denizens of the Bay Area, even among those actively working at the large labs. As much as researchers and advocates may fill our Twitter/X feeds with new product announcements, quotations, and predictions, there remains a feeling of detachment from the rest of their neighbors—the people who must now contend with ever-increasing prices and a growing income gap. This phenomenon is beginning to affect even the knowledge worker: the lawyer, banker, or software engineer who once sat in an ivory tower, confident that their position would be safe from AI-induced replacement. This has created a schism between those who stand to uniquely benefit from the intelligence explosion (either by working directly at a frontier lab or by building technology that benefits frontier labsand those who stand to lose everything, from their livelihoods to their social lives, to artificial counterparts wrought from silicon.
In some sense, San Francisco is ahead of its time. The owners and creators of technology, particularly those associated with software, have been disproportionately rewarded for their efforts for a long time. Owning equity in a fast-growing company is not only a high-signal marker in social situations, but it also ends up dictating how one behaves and, essentially, how one constructs a world model. This has created a recursive cycle in which an individual world model, powered by underlying incentives, produces a wider and wider divide between those who have equity—or otherwise have something to gain—and those on the exterior, who are merely beneficiaries of the technology.
The central issue, then, may not be that capitalism disappears, but that human labor ceases to be the primary mechanism through which most people can participate in it. In a world where intelligence can be purchased through compute, the most valuable economic inputs may no longer be education, skill, or even effort, but ownership of the models, chips, energy, data, and infrastructure through which artificial intelligence operates. Those with equity in these systems may experience an unprecedented expansion of wealth and agency, while those without it become increasingly dependent on technologies they neither own nor control. The resulting underclass may not necessarily be deprived of every material comfort; it may instead be a class that is economically unnecessary, politically peripheral, and permanently excluded from the institutions through which status and power are distributed.
The rest of the world has time. AI adoption, although a common topic at bars and water-cooler conversations, has not yet inundated every aspect of society to nearly the same extent that it has in the Bay Area. San Francisco should serve as both a paragon and a warning. It is an example of what happens when a society adopts technology in an unfettered manner, simultaneously promoting both innovation and recklessness. It should also serve as a mandate for the general public, whether one is a senior engineer or an individual working in the service industry, to learn more about the fundamentals of this technology and begin thinking about how to live in a world where the majority of work may indeed be automated or delegated to AI. For if they do not, the rest of the world may also become like San Francisco: a potpourri of technological advancement, scientific growth, inequality, and classism. The meme of a “permanent underclass” is no longer merely a meme; it is slowly becoming reality.
I recently took the proverbial “tech” pill and decided, like many other twenty-somethings, to spend my summer in San Francisco with the intent of getting an inside track on the latest developments in techno-capitalism, self-improving AI technologies, and hyper-optimized wellness stacks. And as much as I have enjoyed building, connecting, and breathing all things AI, I have realized that the Bay itself may be a portal into what may be coming after the specter of self-improving intelligence becomes a reality.
It is a foregone conclusion that, regardless of what lies on the other side of the intelligence revolution (everlasting doom, human transcendence, or some third thing in between), society will never be the same. For as much as we have bemoaned the economic impacts of AI adoption, there has not yet been an actual realization of what this world will look like. Talk to one of your family members or friends who is not deeply immersed in either rationalism or technology, and they are likely to view the current explosion of AI as falling somewhere on the broad spectrum between a useful tool, like Google, and a scam, like NFTs.
This is largely because the major economic, sociopolitical, and intellectual catalysts associated with AI have been limited to the relatively small circle of Bay Area-adjacent denizens who are either working in the field or are direct beneficiaries of it. I use the word “adjacent” to describe individuals who are not geographically located in the Bay but are still beneficiaries of capital or influence originating from San Francisco and its neighbors.
During my daily travels and tribulations, I have come to a somewhat interesting realization: San Francisco, more so than any other technological hub or modernized city in the West, represents a microcosm and preview of what may become the reality of a post-capitalistic economy after the “singularity.” It is in San Francisco and its adjacent locales where you will encounter swaths of people without proper housing or food living directly beside billboards advertising the latest “hot” startups, hackathon winners, and exited founders. Only in a Bay Area café will you encounter discussions about AI policy, the singularity, and the ever-growing value of private compute taking place just a few steps away from demonstrations arguing against the further development of AI models.
Intelligence is close to being solved. This is a realization that I believe has not fully materialized among the denizens of the Bay Area, even among those actively working at the large labs. As much as researchers and advocates may fill our Twitter/X feeds with new product announcements, quotations, and predictions, there remains a feeling of detachment from the rest of their neighbors—the people who must now contend with ever-increasing prices and a growing income gap. This phenomenon is beginning to affect even the knowledge worker: the lawyer, banker, or software engineer who once sat in an ivory tower, confident that their position would be safe from AI-induced replacement. This has created a schism between those who stand to uniquely benefit from the intelligence explosion (either by working directly at a frontier lab or by building technology that benefits frontier labsand those who stand to lose everything, from their livelihoods to their social lives, to artificial counterparts wrought from silicon.
In some sense, San Francisco is ahead of its time. The owners and creators of technology, particularly those associated with software, have been disproportionately rewarded for their efforts for a long time. Owning equity in a fast-growing company is not only a high-signal marker in social situations, but it also ends up dictating how one behaves and, essentially, how one constructs a world model. This has created a recursive cycle in which an individual world model, powered by underlying incentives, produces a wider and wider divide between those who have equity—or otherwise have something to gain—and those on the exterior, who are merely beneficiaries of the technology.
The central issue, then, may not be that capitalism disappears, but that human labor ceases to be the primary mechanism through which most people can participate in it. In a world where intelligence can be purchased through compute, the most valuable economic inputs may no longer be education, skill, or even effort, but ownership of the models, chips, energy, data, and infrastructure through which artificial intelligence operates. Those with equity in these systems may experience an unprecedented expansion of wealth and agency, while those without it become increasingly dependent on technologies they neither own nor control. The resulting underclass may not necessarily be deprived of every material comfort; it may instead be a class that is economically unnecessary, politically peripheral, and permanently excluded from the institutions through which status and power are distributed.
The rest of the world has time. AI adoption, although a common topic at bars and water-cooler conversations, has not yet inundated every aspect of society to nearly the same extent that it has in the Bay Area. San Francisco should serve as both a paragon and a warning. It is an example of what happens when a society adopts technology in an unfettered manner, simultaneously promoting both innovation and recklessness. It should also serve as a mandate for the general public, whether one is a senior engineer or an individual working in the service industry, to learn more about the fundamentals of this technology and begin thinking about how to live in a world where the majority of work may indeed be automated or delegated to AI. For if they do not, the rest of the world may also become like San Francisco: a potpourri of technological advancement, scientific growth, inequality, and classism. The meme of a “permanent underclass” is no longer merely a meme; it is slowly becoming reality.