Silicon Valley's AI Religion: Inside the Culture Building God

Your 25-year-old friend might be making $10 million a year. In San Francisco's AI scene, that's not even surprising anymore.

Jasmine Sun, a writer who calls herself "an anthropologist of disruption," has spent the past year chronicling the gold-rush vibes of San Francisco's AI boom. Speaking on Charlie Warzel's "Galaxy Brain" podcast, she painted a picture of a city intoxicated by its own technological ambitions.

Building God in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is gripped by something approaching religious fervor. AI researchers genuinely believe they're building "alien superintelligence"—technology that will either solve humanity's greatest problems or destroy us all. There's no middle ground in this binary vision of the future.

"People feel like they're building God," Sun explained. "There's an unbelievable amount of hype, but also very real, almost religious devotion to the technology."

The city has rebounded from its COVID-era doldrums with characteristic Silicon Valley swagger. As Sun describes it, there's "increasing pride" in being the place where "the rest of the country is falling apart, but here we're still excited about the future."

The Great AI Divide: Doomers vs. Accelerationists

Two distinct tribes dominate Silicon Valley's AI culture, and they couldn't be more different.

AI Doomers, led by figures like Eliezer Yudkowsky, believe that artificial general intelligence will inevitably acquire goals humans can't understand. In their view, superintelligent AI will treat humans like ants—expendable obstacles to whatever strange objectives it develops. Their solution? Slow down, regulate, or stop AI development entirely.

Accelerationists (e/acc) see doomers as the new "woke" activists—people so worried about hypothetical risks that they're willing to throttle technological progress. Venture capitalists champion this faction, asking why anyone would want to regulate such incredible technology based on speculative fears.

Interestingly, Sun notes that classic doomerism has waned this year. "At the beginning of the year, if I said I was worried about job loss, people would roll their eyes because it wasn't extinction-level risk," she recalled. Now, economic concerns have moved to the forefront as AI's real-world impacts become clearer.

The Jagged Reality of AI

Sun captured AI's current state perfectly: "AI discovered wholly new proteins before it could count the Rs in the word strawberry, which makes it neither vaporware nor a demigod, but a secret third thing."

This "jagged superintelligence" excels at some tasks while failing spectacularly at others. It's why people can have completely different experiences with the same technology—some see their entire job being automated, others find it useless for their work.

Regarding AGI timelines, most researchers now predict 5-10 years, but Sun focuses less on the exact moment and more on how AI gradually diffuses into society. "I don't really want to wait around until AGI shows up before we start thinking about what that means for us," she said.

Silicon Valley's Rightward Drift

The political transformation of Silicon Valley tells a broader story about American tech culture. Marc Andreessen's journey from Democratic donor to Trump supporter illustrates how regulation and "woke" employee activism pushed tech leaders away from the Democratic Party.

"Silicon Valley has historically been 'live and let live' social liberals," Sun explained. "What they don't like is other people telling them what to do, how to run their companies."

The Biden administration's approach—Lina Khan's antitrust actions, AI safety regulations, crypto oversight—felt like exactly that kind of interference to tech leaders who value autonomy above all else.

Trump-Style Tech Marketing

More fascinating is how Trump's communication style has infected Silicon Valley marketing. Some founders admire Trump not for his policies but for his "founder-like" qualities: delusional self-confidence, ability to remake institutions, and mastery of attention-grabbing tactics.

"Attention is everything in this world," Sun observed. "That's what we've learned from Trump's ascendance." Tech companies increasingly adopt provocative, controversy-courting marketing strategies that prioritize engagement over traditional corporate messaging.

However, Trump's actual policies—tariffs, H1B visa restrictions, government stakes in private companies—have dampened initial enthusiasm among tech leaders who expected more free-market approaches.

The Last Generation of Writers?

Perhaps the most poignant moment in Sun's interview came when she described meeting a Berkeley sophomore who said, "You're so lucky you went to college before ChatGPT, because you can write. I'm just screwed."

The student had written one post with ChatGPT that "mogged" (Gen Z speak for "dominated") all his human-written work in terms of engagement. Yet days later, he sent Sun another piece—entirely human-written and excellent.

"The amazing thing about writing is the idea can live separately from the person who says it," Sun reflected. "That's why new ideas can come from people without authority or charisma and still change the world."