Jobless Tech Workers Are Being Left Out of San Francisco’s AI Boom - Bloomberg.com

Anthropic and OpenAI are generating ‘enormous wealth’ in San Francisco, which Bloomberg describes as ‘overshadowing’ layoffs and an uncertain job market. Overshadowing, mind — not causing, not coexisting with, just casting a bit of shade that the coming IPOs will presumably burn off with a downpour of riches. The IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI are ‘set to rain down riches in the city,’ which is a lovely image if you don’t ask who’s holding the umbrella. Meanwhile, more than four dozen laid-off workers went for a hike on Mount Tamalpais, led by a former Google employee. Nothing says ‘the future is here’ like a former Googler guiding the newly redundant up a hill for a bit of fresh air and perspective.

We did flag the Pew finding that in 34 of 37 countries the most popular answer on AI and jobs was ‘fewer jobs.’ San Francisco has now kindly produced the local case study. The ‘enormous wealth’ is real, the ‘coming IPOs’ are real, and the laid-off workers are also real — they’re just not in the same sentence as the riches unless the sentence is about overshadowing. Note the precise wording: the wealth is ‘overshadowing’ the layoffs. That’s not a causal claim. It’s a weather report. The sun is out, the shadow is long, and the people standing in it are advised to go for a walk.

The former Google employee leading the hike is the article’s quiet masterpiece. In a boom that is ‘set to rain down riches,’ the clearest career progression on offer is from salaried engineer to volunteer mountain guide for the displaced. The IPO money will rain down, all right — on the founders, the early employees, the investors, and the landlords who will raise rents before the first share vests. The rest get a group hike and an ‘uncertain job market.’ At least Mount Tamalpais doesn’t hallucinate. It just sits there, indifferent, while the city below gets richer in a way that has nothing to do with the people who built the thing.