What Do the People Building AI Believe?

About this episode

Charlie Warzel explores the culture of the AI boom with writer Jasmine Sun, discussing the industry's factions and the realities of current AI models.

Silicon Valley runs on hype cycles, and the AI boom is generating a new one—part gold rush, part ideology, and part quasi-religious devotion to building an alien intelligence. On this week’s “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel explores the culture of this boom with the writer Jasmine Sun, who’s been chronicling San Francisco’s AI scene. Sun describes what this moment feels like on the ground, including a subculture of massive salaries, and a weird pride in leaning into tech’s strangeness. Together, Warzel and Sun unpack two major factions shaping the industry: the AI “doomers,” and the accelerationists. The conversation also traces Silicon Valley’s rightward drift—the “founder mode” backlash against regulation and employee activism and the rise of “Trump style” provocation-first tech marketing. Finally, Sun and Warzel address the jagged reality of today’s models, which are brilliant at some tasks and weak at others. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive…

People in this episode

Host: Charlie Warzel

Guest: Jasmine Sun

Topics covered

• AI
• Silicon Valley
• technology culture
• hype cycles
• doomers
• accelerationists

Keywords

• AI boom
• Silicon Valley culture
• tech salaries
• founder mode
• regulation backlash

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Galaxy Brain, Pulitzer

Places: Silicon Valley, San Francisco’s, Silicon Valley’s

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