AI virtuality boom drives San Francisco’s IRL party scene

San Francisco’s party scene is experiencing a renaissance fueled by the AI boom, with tech professionals flocking back to the city for networking events, exclusive salons, and industry gatherings. The surge in social activity coincides with rent increases jumping to the highest in the nation, as people seek human connection amid rapid technological change and uncertainty about AI’s impact on work and society.

What you should know: Industry leaders are gathering at exclusive events to discuss AI’s transformative effects and strategies for navigating uncertainty.

• AGI House, a Hillsborough mansion known for hosting tech celebrities like Google cofounder Sergey Brin, recently held a garden gala featuring OpenAI’s chief strategy officer Jason Kwon and former OpenAI interim CEO Emmett Shear.
• The event was curated by AGI House founder Rocky Yu and featured a DJ set by Twitch cofounder Justin Kan.
• Similar gatherings are happening across the city, from Michelin-starred restaurant dinners to press events hosted by venture capital firms.

Why human connection matters: Tech veterans emphasize that building relationships becomes more crucial during times of rapid change and uncertainty.

• Poshmark cofounder Manish Chandra noted that “human connections deepen when times are tough,” while during good times “people just kind of ignore each other.”
• Former OpenAI interim CEO Emmett Shear referenced Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock,” explaining the psychological disorientation from rapid technological change: “This feeling of overwhelm, that if things keep changing, I can’t learn fast enough to keep up with the system.”
• Shear compared the current situation to hunter-gatherers, noting that tight communities were not only spiritually beneficial but economically sound: “When you store meat from the hunt in the bellies of friends, they’ll be around to help when you find yourself in a tough spot.”

Investment strategies for the AI era: Venture capitalists are developing new frameworks to evaluate AI startups and avoid obsolescence.

• Jeff Crowe of Norwest Venture Partners shared the story of a 20-year-old founder who received seed funding for text-to-sheets and text-to-deck apps right before ChatGPT made those features obsolete.
• He looks for defensible moats including domain-specific data, enterprise system integration, and bespoke distribution tied to supply chains.
• Crowe believes hiring “AI-natives” is crucial because “their rate of change is less than a worker whose baseline is pre-AI.”

The rise of AI workers: Companies are increasingly replacing human employees with AI agents across various business functions.

• Runway cofounder Siqi Chen revealed his company knew from launch in 2020 they’d never exceed 100 employees because they had early access to GPT-3 and could scale with AI rather than headcount.
• Chen’s hiring strategy focuses exclusively on senior talent: “It’s staff or principal level only at this point, because junior stuff can basically be done by LLMs today.”
• One company deployed an AI in Slack for IT support under the name “Paul,” not “AI Paul,” highlighting how seamlessly AI workers are being integrated.

What they’re saying: Industry leaders offer mixed perspectives on AI’s impact on traditional business models and human potential.

• Initialized Capital’s Brett Gibson on the future of apps: “Software is going to trend towards being generatable. There are going to be a lot of apps you still want a relationship with for a variety of reasons, because they have other people on them and you’re collaborating, or perhaps the AI itself has a personality you want to interact with.”
• Chris Messina, inventor of the hashtag, on advice for Gen Alpha: “VCs are over, SAS is over, everything that’s been going on for the last 10 or 15 years kind of doesn’t really make sense anymore. If you really want to invest in the future, it’s about having a perspective, being able to bring people into that and creating movements.”
• Gibson on human adaptation: “The one thing that makes me very hopeful is that if there’s anything AI is very good at, it’s personalized education. People should follow whatever they’re interested in and curious about because a high agency person using high leverage tools are going to do something cool and that’s valuable.”

The bottom line: While AI threatens to automate many jobs, building personal brands and fostering human connections remain valuable as the technology reshapes Silicon Valley’s social and professional landscape.