‘It’s good for the city’: how the AI craze has taken over San Francisco
From museum exhibits to booming AI hubs, San Francisco navigates optimism and anxiety amid the rapid growth of artificial intelligence
On a sunny day in San Francisco, along the US city’s waterfront, families dived into the wacky world of artificial intelligence inside the Exploratorium museum.
Visitors created shadow puppets for AI to identify, used AI to generate songs, asked chatbots questions, and faced off against AI in a game where players tried to draw images that only humans would recognise. A giant robot hand moved around, and people peered into a video game chip.
“It sort of breaks down those guardrails, those big walls that people have put up around AI, and allows them to have a conversation with somebody else,” says Doug Thistlewolf, who manages exhibit development at the Exploratorium.