The view from inside the AI bubble

The conference is a primary battleground in AI’s talent war. Much of the recruiting effort happens outside the conference center itself, at semisecret, invitation-only events in downtown San Diego. 

These events captured the ever-growing opulence of the industry. In a lounge hosted by the Laude Institute, an AI-development support group, a grad student told me about starting salaries at various AI companies of “a million, a million five,” of which a large portion was equity. The lounge was designed in the style of a VIP lounge at a music festival. It was, in fact, located at the top of the Hard Rock Hotel.  

The place to be, if you could get in, was the party hosted by Cohere, a Canadian company that builds large language models.  

The party was held on the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier used in Operation Desert Storm, which is now docked in the San Diego harbor. The purpose, according to the event’s sign-up page, was “to celebrate AI’s potential to connect our world.”

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