A peek into the post-capitalist dystopia

I recently took the proverbial “tech” pill and decided, like many other twenty-somethings, to spend my summer in San Francisco with the intent of getting an inside track on the latest developments in techno-capitalism, self-improving AI technologies, and hyper-optimized wellness stacks. And as much as I have enjoyed building, connecting, and breathing all things AI, I have realized that the Bay itself may be a portal into what may be coming after the specter of self-improving intelligence becomes a reality.

It is a foregone conclusion that, regardless of what lies on the other side of the intelligence revolution (everlasting doom, human transcendence, or some third thing in between), society will never be the same. For as much as we have bemoaned the economic impacts of AI adoption, there has not yet been an actual realization of what this world will look like. Talk to one of your family members or friends who is not deeply immersed in either rationalism or technology, and they are likely to view the current explosion of AI as falling somewhere on the broad spectrum between a useful tool, like Google, and a scam, like NFTs.

This is largely because the major economic, sociopolitical, and intellectual catalysts associated with AI have been limited to the relatively small circle of Bay Area-adjacent denizens who are either working in the field or are direct beneficiaries of it. I use the word “adjacent” to describe individuals who are not geographically located in the Bay but are still beneficiaries of capital or influence originating from San Francisco and its neighbors.

During my daily travels and tribulations, I have come to a somewhat interesting realization: San Francisco, more so than any other technological hub or modernized city in the West, represents a microcosm and preview of what may become the reality of a post-capitalistic economy after the “singularity.” It is in San Francisco and its adjacent locales where you will encounter swaths of people without…