Everyone in Seattle Hates AI — Jonathon Ready

Seattle's tech scene is in a bad place. It's never been the same as SF's; fewer startups, more families, more people putting down roots than "living in SF for a few years." Even when I've been envious of parts of the more vibrant, always-on SF scene, I've never wanted to live in SF or leave Seattle.

That doesn’t feel so true these days. Despite most of the frontier labs having at least a nominal presence here (AFAICT GDM does not have roles in Seattle), being the home of UW’s prestigious CSE program, Ai2, and Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google all having huge presences, the tech scene feels nearly dead, especially when it comes to AI. It feels more like a “satellite office” than ever before.

So, when I read Jonathon Ready’s post “Everyone in Seattle Hates AI”, I found myself instantly relating.

Seattle might be the epicenter for anti-AI sentiment among major US cities. I don’t have the data, to be clear, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all. I’m not sure exactly why. There’s always a healthy anti-tech crowd here that wants the Seattle of the late 90s / early 2000s back, but this is different. Maybe it’s the city’s more recent progressive turn; polling data does reveal that self-identified progressives are distinctly anti-AI.

Maybe it’s the layoffs that have been justified by AI while profits soar. Maybe it’s the ham-first AI “rollouts” that enterprises are trying (points that Jonathon identifies as well). But those things are happening ~everywhere, while the anti-AI sentiment seems particularly strong here in the PNW.

When I was the head of Responsible AI at Indeed, I would find myself feeling sheepish and a bit defensive when the “AI” part of my job came up in discussions with Seattleties. I almost never volunteered it because it was usually met with “well at least someone is trying to think about doing it responsibly” or “so your job is to convince people to not use it, right?” or just an awkward subject change. Occasionally I’d have a good discussion where I’d explain that it’s possible to both want to build a better future with AI and care deeply about the ways it can go wrong.

I love this city, with all of its shortcomings and quirks. I chose to stay here after grad school, to weather Covid here, to start a family here.

I hope that this is a passing moment, accentuated by the state of the world, the state of politics, the uncertainty that so many are feeling in so many domains of their lives right now. I hope we can bring this city’s tech scene back to life and not watch as the future is built with AI.

I’ll close with Jonathan’s closing remarks:

Seattle has talent as good as anywhere. But in San Francisco, people still believe they can change the world—so sometimes they actually do.