{"id":26683,"date":"2023-05-24T21:07:22","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T04:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=26683"},"modified":"2023-05-24T21:07:23","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T04:07:23","slug":"s-f-is-the-best-place-to-start-an-ai-company-says-openai-president-could-a-tech-revolution-bring-a-new-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/05\/24\/s-f-is-the-best-place-to-start-an-ai-company-says-openai-president-could-a-tech-revolution-bring-a-new-boom\/","title":{"rendered":"S.F. is the \u2018best place to start an AI company,\u2019 says OpenAI president. Could a tech revolution bring a new boom?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Roland Li<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

May 22, 2023 (SFChronicle.com)<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bill
Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder, said during the conference\u2019s keynote that he believes an AI personal assistant, or agent, will automate the basics of internet use and make some of the dominant companies redundant.\u00a0Ole Berg-Rusten\/NTB\/AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Artificial intelligence<\/a> is poised to upend society and technology, transform art, music and creative fields and potentially replace or eliminate the need for millions of human workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, if the big crowd that crammed into the Palace Hotel on Monday in downtown San Francisco for a high-profile AI conference is any indication, the city\u2019s beleaguered economy could benefit immensely from the potential revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds of attendees crowded into an ornate ballroom to hear some of the luminaries in the AI world at the invite-only conference organized by Goldman Sachs and Ron Conway, founder of the venture capital firm SV Angel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think S.F. is by far the best place to start an AI company,\u201d said OpenAI President Greg Brockman, whose San Francisco company created the ubiquitous ChatGPT chatbot. \u201cBut it could be 10x or 100x better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city is seen as succeeding \u201cdespite rather than because of its policies,\u201d including failings around homelessness and questions about whether it is pro-business, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is possible to make it truly the best place imaginable\u201d for AI, Brockman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with OpenAI, San Francisco is home to Scale AI, valued at $7.3 billion, though the company cut 20% of its workforce earlier this year, and Anthropic and Dialpad, which have each raised hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the conference, Mayor London Breed hailed the industry and city\u2019s resilience, declaring San Francisco as \u201cthe AI capital of the world,\u201d set to rise like a phoenix, and compared it to the Gold Rush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have some of the most extraordinary and innovative investors. We have the incredible talent,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have all the creative minds that are coming together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said it was also time to reimagine downtown San Francisco to promote more innovation and more diverse uses, even speculating about putting a soccer field near Moscone Center. (There have been no official plans to do so.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to making sure that we have a very close relationship,\u201d she told the room of hundreds of business leaders. \u201cDon\u2019t let others tell you what San Francisco is. Learn from your own experiences\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ron Conway, the influential venture capitalist and political power broker, who co-organized the conference, said he remains bullish about the region remaining the tech capital of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Bay Area and San Francisco will only become more important to technology. I would not want to be the mayor of New York today. Because AI is going to create more jobs in this country than have ever been created before. And you\u2019re sitting in the epicenter of all these founders,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some economists aren\u2019t sure that San Francisco will see a jobs boom due to AI. In one measure of job listings by ZipRecruiter, San Francisco\u2019s share of AI jobs<\/a> fell between 2020 and 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city recovered from previous crises, like the 2000s dot-com collapse and 2008 recession, he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to do a whole bunch of things in parallel. We need to get fentanyl off the streets. We need to clean up the streets, we need to make more advancements in homelessness. While we fill downtown. And we\u2019ve done this before, we just need to do it again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conway also expressed confidence that workers will come back to the office and realize they\u2019ve missed out because of remote work, which has badly hurt San Francisco\u2019s office market. Nearly a third of the city\u2019s space is available for lease or sublease and more vacancies are expected as leases expire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce people get back together, they love it. They forget about serendipity. They forget about the companionship and camaraderie, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AI faces many uncertainties, including a lack of clarity around potential government regulations, and numerous ethics, privacy and safety concerns. Earlier this month, Vice President Kamala Harris met with top AI leaders and said in a statement that the technology has \u201cpotential to dramatically increase threats to safety and security, infringe civil rights and privacy, and erode public trust and faith in democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, testified in Congress last week that he supports government regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder, said during the conference\u2019s keynote that he believes an AI personal assistant, or agent, will automate the basics of Internet use and make some of the dominant companies redundant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll never go to a search site again,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll never go to Amazon again. Everything will be mediated through your agent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn\u2019t believe one single company will dominate AI, and there\u2019s an equal chance that a startup or a big tech company creates the most popular digital assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gates also said that media coverage hasn\u2019t focused as much on the positive applications of AI, such as creating a \u201cpersonal tutor for every student in Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to make that a reality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reach Roland Li: roland.li@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @rolandlisf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written By Roland Li<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roland Li covers commercial real estate for the business desk, focusing on the Bay Area office and retail sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was previously a reporter at San Francisco Business Times, where he won one award from the California News Publishers Association and three from the National Association of Real Estate Editors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is the author of \u201cGood Luck Have Fun: The Rise of eSports,” a 2016 book on the history of the competitive video game industry. Before moving to the Bay Area in 2015, he studied and worked in New York. He freelanced for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other local publications. His hobbies include swimming and urban photography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"San<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\"HEARST\u00a92023 Hearst Communications, Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roland Li May 22, 2023 (SFChronicle.com) Artificial intelligence is poised to upend society and technology, transform art, music and creative fields and potentially replace or eliminate the need for millions of human workers. And, if the big crowd that crammed into the Palace Hotel on Monday in downtown San Francisco for a… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[634],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26683"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26684,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26683\/revisions\/26684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}