San Francisco, AI capital of the world, is an economic laggard | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco, AI capital of the world, is an economic laggard

economist.com

48 points1vuio0pswjnm745 comments

Anybody who has tried to rent an apartment in SF in the past 6 months knows that the city is rebounding fast - avg rents are skyrocketing again and there are lines out the door for 1/2bds. People are locked-in to their covid specials that they outgrew, but can't afford to leave. I watched some friends offer to pay 12 months of rent up-front in cash for a place and still got outbid by another offer.

I honestly disagree with this article - it seems to be conflating "economic activity" with extremely high-end real estate sales data in certain neighborhoods. The city feels much more alive in the past 12 months than it was previously, and there is a lot more energy and public events. If there's anything specific to complain about, it's that the AI boom has led to the 996+ crowd staying inside and not contributing much to the local scene, but honestly that's probably fine with everyone involved.

How big is the 996 crowd compared to the total tech employment in SF? Is it really that popular?

In practice I don't know how big 996 is but a lot of people are putting in a lot of effort and excitement into their current startups. It's not too dissimilar to SF in the social network and early gig economy days, along with all the posturing about working long hours (the motto then was "work hard play hard") even when nobody is actually working the hours they say.

But the energy is a bit infectious. I'm happy to see SF on the rise again.

Far, far bigger than any other US city. Why? IMO with AI it's basically an arms-race mentality and a lot of the startups/labs here are grinding 24/7 to snap up the industries before legacy businesses realize what's happening. It's a lot easier to feel that energy/pressure when everyone around you is doing the same thing, vs in NYC or wherever where everyone is out enjoying their weekends.

It was a ghost town last time I was there about 6 months ago. You could walk down the middle of Market St at 9am on a weekday because its so empty. The only time I ever saw SF as empty was 9/11/01.

That's because market street is closed to cars now. It's essentially a pedestrian corridor with the trolley/busses.

They made that change 10 years ago. There were still plenty of cars on it until 2020. Why are you lying to people?

You posted this about 19 days ago: "This is the country that takes a 2 hour nap every day. They also have a sleeping contest every year with a winner and everything. And Spain isn't hot like Mexico where folks take 2 hours off in the topically heat and make it up for it in the evening because that's more efficient."

You are a fucking moron, not only have you no idea about my country but you revel on your ignorance and preen publicly about its inferiority as confabulated by you. You are a disgusting piece of waste and I hope people like you in your country continue their path off the cliff of relevance and power they have chosen. I find you repugnant to the extreme.

I lived in Spain for a time during their summer. Don't like the truth, don't go on the Internet.

> the 996+ crowd

What does this mean?

Mid-20's tech guys vigorously prompting LLM agents in the race to burn as many tokens as possible during 72-hour work week (9 am-9 pm, 6 days per week) in order to, paradoxically, not need to work anymore once AGI is achieved.

Thanks, now that you mention it I was aware of this.

But it wasn’t immediately obvious to me what was being discussed in this context, to me it looked like it was maybe a reference for to a certain set of postcodes or telephone number prefixes in reference to a certain set of people or some such.

I think the plus threw me.

The plus I haven't encountered before, but "996" is a Google away. In short, working 9 AM to 9 PM, six days per week.

If I wanted a machine response I’m quite capable of using my preferred tools.

I come here for the conversation.

Your comment would have been better without the needles reminder that search providers exist.

Every sane and persons with a personality/hobby/soul I know who isn’t rotting away at their job, or a career employee at some south bay company they plan to retire from have all left SF for abroad, SoCal, or NYC.

My hunch is the people that are competing for housing are mostly new AI sector transplants, who will do the same thing that has ruined the city to begin with. Do nothing to support the local community, spend all their time in Hayes Valley and Marina, buy a Tesla or Porsche that they can drive on the 280 to San Jose, Monterey, Napa - then return to the city to order doordash before trading crypto until they fall asleep and repeat.

I have a few friends who are still stuck in SF and they say the city feels the most soulless and rude it’s ever felt. It’s actually made one of my friends turn to anti-depressants as he’s really struggling. He vents to me a lot about how he doesn’t feel like he can connect or talk to anyone anymore, not even baristas at a coffee shop, because everyone has become so anemic.

Interesting that SoCal becomes an option for these people. What’s the draw with that move?

SoCal is more cosmopolitan, better weather, more diverse tech landscape, better food, more culture, etc.

It’s huge, has great weather, hundreds of cities/neighborhoods to choose from, easy flights to anywhere, and tons of jobs.

Oh yeah - dodgers and lakers

Tons of jobs? Do you mean in tech, or in general?

As someone who lives and works in SF, I think it depends quite a bit on your social scene and neighborhood. Where I'm at it's constantly alive with people in the parks, out for running/biking groups, going to farmer's markets, attending art fairs, bars overflowing, etc. I meet lots of interesting people and enjoy the scene quite a bit, but maybe I run in a younger crowd than your friend who complains about the city.

Not here to change your mind, but I'm "defending" SF because I've never experienced such a difference between the lived experience in a city and the online vitriol you see constantly about it. It's a true "don't believe your lying eyes" situation and it's honestly a bit disorienting.

> My hunch is the people are competing for housing are mostly new AI sector transplants...

I've absolutely nothing against transplants [0], but transplants that treat this place as the "mining town" that the major landowners and Supervisors have made it to be definitely suck the life and the weird out of the city.

There may be be a bunch of people driving up rents for the city's criminally-scarce -and frequently substandard- housing, but that doesn't mean that the city's not in deep shit. I roam around the city a whole lot on foot, and I see so, so many shuttered businesses and empty storefronts... even in places that were going gangbusters ten, fifteen years ago. The only places that seem to be doing quite well are the places that serve the poorest in the city -such as much of the Tenderloin-, [1] which are places that these new transplants would probably never, ever set foot in.

[0] I'm sure that you don't, either... not in general, anyway.

[1] I can't explain why these places are still doing great. Perhaps it's because the landowners and business managers understand that there's absolutely no way that they can get anything other than a perfectly normal rate of return from these properties... so the batshit insane stuff we see in the fancier parts of town that keeps commercial spaces in fine locations empty for ten+ years and forces out healthy businesses that have been in their space for decades simply doesn't happen? [2]

[2] For folks who want to retort that I simply don't understand how any of this works: Remember that California has Property Tax Control (by way of the 197X "Proposition 13"), which means that a landowner's property tax increases by a very small percentage of its originally assessed value each year, rather than what would be that property's current assessed value. What this means is that as long as a property does not change hands, the property tax paid by that landowner pretty much never increases... and there are ways to redirect the profits from and effective control of that property to a new human or corporate entity while ensuring that that property fails to legally change hands.

I live in Boston and software is dead here. It’s a biotech city but we used to be a player in software. AI missed us, remote work hollowed it out. I would love some AI dollars flowing here but it’s pretty sad. My hope is some defense tech drone stuff blows up but your problems would be welcome on the east coast!

I'm not sure why this got flagged... I wonder if someone misunderstood what "My hope is some defense tech drone stuff blows up..." meant.

As for

> ...remote work hollowed it out...

there's a simple solution: make it so that ordinary folks can actually afford to raise a family in the city. If folks can afford to raise a family in your city, then they're there for more than just the big paycheck, and won't run screaming the moment their well-paying job stops chaining them to an absurdly expensive city.

How does 91 x >1e9 become 600e9? Is it like a bundle discount?

"It hosts 91 other AI “unicorns”, private companies worth more than $1bn, collectively valued at a further $600bn."

Because they are worth more than 1B? If each is worth 7, that's worth 600B? Some are worth plenty more than 7.

How I see SF : I have 200mn dollar worth of shares of an AI company. I’ll buy it from you for 200mn worth of shares of an ad agency. We both would however need to turn these ‘assets’ into cash from banks to buy groceries. The banks don’t rate these very highly. So we are worth maybe 5mn if we consider book value.

Prop 13

Weird, I thought AI was going to create so much economic surplus that we wouldn’t know what to do with it. What happened?

It is happening, just as planned and predicted. Last I checked every so-called AI company is swimming in cash, and so are their founders and leaders. You didn’t think the economic surplus would be evenly distributed, did you?

Some people said in their manifestos that AI was going to be Open and democratized and would benefit all of humanity.

It was 100% a rugpull but charitably not quite 100% predictable.

What people?

What do you mean by "open"?

By "open" did those people mean "free as in beer"?

What does rugpull mean in this context?

OpenAI was originally founded on the parent's concepts, but obviously that changed at some point.

Currently, Elon is suing Altman because Altman turned it for profit. Oddly, in that Elon is taking the moral road?

> Oddly, in that Elon is taking the moral road?

Holding other people to standards he wouldn't hold himself to?

Sounds totally on-brand.

I was talking about OpenAI, referencing their original mission statement. Other companies have said similar things.

Rugpull means they "pulled the rug out" from underneath those who believed their mission statement, and decided instead to take over the world and screw everyone else.

Swimming in borrowed or imaginary cash without any hope of paying it back in the foreseeable future.

Investors are people who just literally hand you cash, its not imaginary

> Weird, I thought AI was going to create so much economic surplus that we wouldn’t know what to do with it. What happened?

The surplus is converted in new structure and becomes baseline. Even if a company does not change, their competition does (with AI), and their customers & investors change their values as well. So the structure in which the company exists has changed.

That forces everyone to adapt, but most importantly surplus cannot be captured. Everyone is working harder just to stay in place. AI is like internet, Google search and MS office - everyone has them. They provide no competitive advantage, no moat for using them.

Straight into landlord's pockets.

That's a multi-decade phenomenon based on historical precedents (in the best case scenario). Ultimately, whether that "best case" manifests is dependent on whether SF residents want it badly enough. It's a matter of political will -- residents' Progressive values have to actually align with how they vote and act (over the long-term)

Same place it always goes, yachts.

Please read the actual article instead of blindly responding to the title.

I did read it, what do you think I missed? The article very clearly and explicitly made the point that despite huge speculative funding for an influx of AI startups, San Francisco’s economy isn’t doing all that well. Which I can confirm, as a longtime and current San Francisco resident.

To be fair, the article hardly says anything more than "the middle class of the city has hollowed out".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com