从《大空头》到旧金山：AI泡沫里的狂欢与眩晕

Original Title: What's That Smell in San Francisco?

Original Author: Spencer Yen

Original Translation Compiled by: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: San Francisco is once again becoming the intersection of technological revolution and financial bubbles. AI companies, research labs, venture capital, outdoor advertisements, and an informal network of information collectively shape a highly charged urban atmosphere: some are propelled forward by valuations and equity packages, others are immersed in apocalyptic visions of AGI, and still others view math competition prodigies as the gateway to the next generation of excess returns.

The author takes the line "I smell money" from *The Big Short* as a starting point, documenting observations after moving from New York to San Francisco: the city's technological density, wealth creation, and information asymmetry are real, and so are the anxiety, comparison, and Big Bubble Behavior. When AI becomes the only status game in San Francisco, innovation, speculation, faith, and fear begin to mix, forming the most intuitive on-site sample of this AI boom.

The interesting aspect of this article lies not in hastily judging when the bubble will burst, but in presenting how the bubble occurs: how people talk, compare, invest, and worry, and how they try to find their place within the narrative that "the future is coming." The music is still playing, the party isn't over yet, but the author reminds himself, and everyone in it: you can dance, but don't get drunk.

Below is the original text:

One of my favorite movie scenes is the Jenga tower scene from *The Big Short*: Ryan Gosling's character pitches a trade shorting the US housing market to Steve Carell's hedge fund team.

In that conference room, he exudes an insufferably confident, asshole-like aura, accompanied by three props: his sidekick Chris, his quant Jiang, and a Jenga tower with mortgage bond ratings printed on the blocks. The opening line is also brilliant: Do you smell that? What is that smell? What? Perfume? No. Opportunity? No. It's money. I smell money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgF98vyn2fY

A few months ago, I moved from New York to San Francisco to join a friend's startup. Before moving, everyone told me, "You have to go to San Francisco," saying that's where everything is happening. So during this time, I've been facing a question: Is San Francisco really that important? Did I really miss out on something while I was in New York?

My answer so far is: if you want to be at the center of this massive technological revolution and bubble, then this is indeed the place to be. The density is real, the informal information networks are real, and because of that, information asymmetry is also real.

During my time in San Francisco, I've accumulated some observations and thoughts. Here's what I've "smelled" in San Francisco:

1. People are shaking

2. There's only one status game here

3. A city that always cries wolf

4. Obsession with math prodigies

It's striking how starkly different human experiences can be within the same city. Walking down some streets, you feel like you're in hell; turn a corner, and you can see the bay, distant cypress trees, and beautiful scenery. The most tech-forward, futuristic moments are probably watching various self-driving cars roam the city streets. I can't help but smile every time I see those new, friendly light blue Waymo cars. Or, you might feel like you're being watched by Ava, the AI BDR (AI Business Development Representative). I hate that ad. But I have to admit, they successfully used "rage-bait" to get me to keep mentioning it. Every morning, I step out of my apartment and see this monstrosity:

Why do people graffiti friend.com but not this kind of garbage ad? Also, if you live nearby, we can go get ice cream together!

People in San Francisco Are Shaking

A few weeks ago, I was hanging out with my friend Jared (@imjaredz). He lives in New York, but recently joined Cognition. We had lunch and coffee at the Cognition office. The vibe was good, the coffee was great, and the rooftop was nice. I asked him what he thought of the San Francisco vibe.

"Have you noticed that people in San Francisco are shaking?" I laughed and thought, what? Shaking? Then I realized I had had a cold brew that morning, consumed 300mg of caffeine, and was also shaking a bit. "Yeah, literally shaking. I'm not against everyone maxing out their ADD tendencies, but next time you have a coffee chat, pay attention – see if they're shaking."

Bubbles and boom periods generate a restless energy, as if you'll never have another chance to "make it." I'm not immune either – after Jared pointed it out, I noticed I might be shaking sometimes too. The meme about "hustling desperately to escape permanent lower class" has been overdone, but every meme becomes popular partly because it captures the zeitgeist. If nightlife is a city's heartbeat and the thermometer defining its culture, what does it mean when a "dog startup's" 24-hour coffee shop becomes the de facto late-night hustling mecca?

Shaking is part of the technological revolution and financial bubble process. I used AI for writing this time, and I apologize in advance if you want to kill me for it. But I was Googling Carlota Perez to find some citations, and I really liked Gemini's summary of the "Frenzy Phase":

Frenzy Phase: The peak of the installation period, where market psychology discards fundamentals in this phase. Financial participants no longer seek dividends but turn to capital gains, causing the "paper economy" to decouple from the "real economy."

Source: https://stratechery.com/2021/the-death-and-birth-of-technological-revolutions/

A friend of mine coined the term "Big Bubble Behavior." It's a beautiful phrase, and I've been using it for the past two weeks to mark everything that fits the characteristics of the frenzy phase. Market euphoria sometimes leads people to irrational behavior. Shaking is Big Bubble Behavior. I've seen platters of lobster tails twice in my life: first at a crypto party in a Venetian Island mansion in Miami in 2021, and second at ClawCon in 2026.

Big Bubble Behavior

There's Only One Status Game Here in San Francisco

David Foster Wallace, *This is Water*: https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

In San Francisco, this water is AI. Outdoor ads are everywhere – billboards, buses, bus stops, bikeshare bikes, even the blue sky seems occupied by it.

My issue with San Francisco is that the dominant status game is only one: tech. You go to dinner, or hang out in the park, and you hear the same words. You also see all sorts of "alpha farming" (seeking informational advantages) behaviors because those informal information networks do exist. And I can't even be angry, because I'm that kind of person too. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

The problem is, when a city has only one dominant status game, it's too easy to compare yourself to others.

We increasingly measure and compare each other with vanity metrics, like how much money was raised, or what letter of the alphabet your company is on. I really wish someone would raise a Series Z, because it would directly prove how absurd the private market has become. You'll hear gossip about which hot startups are being chased by financial players to invest, and what feverish valuations they're at. Then you can't help but start doing that disgusting, Blind-style reverse math: what is someone's equity package actually worth now?

I told a friend, if you see that reverse math on Blind for calculating compensation and optimizing offers, you'd cringe so hard your toes curl. Blind is that anonymous big tech social network, best known for memes like: "I'm having a life crisis, my wife might leave me, but do you think I should take Meta's L6, or Google's L9? TC: $969k." So why are we doing the same thing here? Go touch some grass. Or, this is just my cope to comfort myself.

In New York, there are at least seven different status games existing simultaneously. Finance, big law, music, fashion, celebrity circles, old money family offices, journalism, sports, entertainment. Because the range is so broad, some games are so distant they feel almost unreachable, which paradoxically makes them interesting to talk about and learn. It disperses the attention of all ambitious people.

I enjoy asking my law school friends which top law firms are most prestigious and understanding the subtle differences between each; I enjoy learning about the world of fashion and luxury, and what it takes to survive in that industry; I also enjoy understanding the privileged lives of quant elites and their arrangements for garden leave (paid non-compete gardening leave after resignation).

San Francisco is creating unprecedented wealth, which brings a strange energy. A friend doing research mentioned that people around them are already studying land purchases and diversifying assets into scarce resources. There's a feeling here: you either have lab equity or you don't. There's a joke that people in San Francisco don't know how to spend money; this strange energy comes from a lot of new wealth being created, but people don't know what to do with it. First time being rich? Let experienced rich kids teach you how to enjoy life.

*Super Rich Kids* – Frank Ocean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XCQNpjWmRE

A City That Always Cries Wolf

My first impression of San Francisco was a sense of apocalyptic sentiment. Maybe researchers in the labs really do see some kind of "second coming," and if so, their calls for slowing down and emphasizing safety are certainly reasonable. But I can't truly know. The only thing I know is how apocalyptic talk makes *me* feel – not good!

I've already had plenty of nihilistic conversations, with vibes like: "If Mythos can wipe all this out in one go, or break everything down, then what are we even doing here building software?" and "Will AI destroy our lives?" and "AI will create massive inequality and cause a lot of pain for society."

My one-sentence take here is: Humans will always find other things to do. Work will migrate to higher levels of abstraction. New things will become valuable.

We are terrible at predicting what future society will look like. I think the anti-capitalists I read in college were angry in the wrong direction – imagine their reaction if they saw humans deriving joy from AI-generated fruit trash videos, or the "Tung Tung Tung Sahur" of Italian brain rot.

"The problem isn't that AI is making content stupid, [sniff], it's that we *enjoy* this stupidity, treating it like a sacred trash, a digital fetish object, [sniff], isn't it?"

From my friend Samir. His bio: Not a researcher, but he has a "Fish Brother."

Anyone else have their own "So-and-So Brother"? Let me know.

A friend working in a lab pointed out that the GTM (Go-To-Market/Sales/Growth) team and the research team within the same company actually have completely different life experiences right now. That apocalypticism is balanced by something else: "Come hang out with the GTM team, have a beer, touch some grass." There is definitely something worth pondering in the contrast between the pessimism of model creators and the optimism of the people closest to technology deployment. It's time to go Forward Deployed!

Reality has a surprising amount of detail: https://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail

Six years ago, when I was in college, I wrote about how AI might reshape social structures, titled *Polanyi and the Second Great Transformation* (No need for Pangram AI detection; Medium articles before 2023 were like organic pastures of human writing).

Let me explain the reference: Karl Polanyi was an Austro-Hungarian economic sociologist, famous for his book *The Great Transformation*. Written in 1944, it critiqued the rise of modern market capitalism in 19th century England. So, the "First Great Transformation" refers to the shift toward capitalism, and my 21-year-old self, thinking I was clever, called AI the "Second" Great Transformation... you get it.

Polanyi's most famous concept is "The Double Movement," describing a historical push-and-pull phenomenon: on one hand, free markets constantly expand; on the other, society generates counter-movements attempting to protect itself through regulation. The first movement is capitalist elites trying to expand free markets and commodify society; translated to today, it's commodifying intelligence. The second counter-movement is people reacting to market-driven destruction and trying to protect society; translated to today, it's anti-AI, anti-data center rhetoric.

This was my naive college student writing at 21:

Polanyi explains that the development of machines for production led to the "fictitious commodification" of labor (people) and land (nature). Although the Fourth Industrial Revolution has occurred within a market system, the arrival of mechanical minds brings a different threat: taking over jobs. As computers can perform more "human" cognitive tasks with greater efficiency, many ordinary people might lose their jobs.

Polanyi wrote: "Nothing could save the common people of England from the impact of the Industrial Revolution. The blind faith in spontaneous progress had taken hold of people's minds..."

https://medium.com/@spenceryen/polanyi-and-the-second-great-transformation-6d6364b5d3c6

So now thinking about it, maybe those who keep crying wolf actually have a point. Blind faith in spontaneous progress may not end well. Polanyi's critique of market capitalism is that for most of human history, economic activity was subordinate to social, cultural, and religious institutions. But later, market capitalism reversed this relationship, making society subordinate to the economy.

How can we ensure that society doesn't become subordinate to a state of geniuses in data centers? As Ben Thompson accurately pointed out in his article on Anthropic's Mythos, the punchline of *The Boy Who Cried Wolf* is that the wolf eventually comes.

But what does the capitalist inside me think? Then invest in social, cultural, and religious institutions! If you have any good trade ideas, feel free to DM me your prospectus.

Obsession with Math Prodigies

Another one of my favorite gags from the Jenga scene in *The Big Short* is Ryan Gosling pointing to the Chinese guy next to him and saying: "That's my quant." This vibe has a strange similarity to the recent batch of hot founders being chased by investors, who are often the prodigy kids who dominated math competitions as children.

Again, Ryan Gosling, responding to Steve Carell's skepticism:

"You're saying that if defaults just hit 8%, these bonds blow up, and we're at 4%? If they hit 8%, it's the end of the world?" "Yeah, that's right." "Why is no one talking about it? Are you absolutely sure about this mathematical model?" "Look at him. That's my quant." "Your what?" "My quan-ti-ta-tive, my mathematics expert. Look at him. Don't you notice something different about him? Look at his face." "That's kind of racist." "Look at his eyes. I'll give you a hint, his name is Yang! He won the national math