Get dressed, we’re off to Silicon Valley

Artificial intelligence is the great spectre of our time, more so than the masses’ re-evaluation of the effectiveness of democracy, melanoma or the Russian invader. We are living in an Asimov story, in a disaster film where each of us thinks we are the prophetic scientist-hero warning the world of the imminent attack by the Body Snatchers, or of the comet set to strike the Earth. The tech-bros know this. They know full well that AI and its industry have, as they say in the US, a ‘bad rep’, a ‘bad reputation’. While they are provoking environmentalists because data centres consume as much water as a cattle farm, while experts warn that jobs are at risk, and while mid-term elections hinge on which candidate promises to rein in the power of new technologies, these companies are trying to present themselves as likeable—and, above all, cool. Those suburban garage-based wunderkinds who dropped out of Harvard and now attend the Bilderberg Group – for years they could not have cared less about looking cool, with their hoodies and Red Bull.

We have already witnessed a superficial metamorphosis on their part, coinciding with a ‘Trumpification’ of Silicon Valley, which has essentially boiled down to going to the gym, attending the odd party and splashing out on clothes – in short, everything that the bullies who used to pick on them at secondary school were doing thirty years ago whilst they sat in front of their computers. This year, the Stanford ‘Tolkienians’ at Palantir launched a $239 blue shirt that blends the aesthetic of a Prada Foundation doorman with an assembly-line worker, evoking a postmodern Cipputi vibe. Anthropic has opened a pop-up bar giving away ‘performative masculinity’ caps emblazoned with the word ‘thinking’. These companies’ websites feature soothing pastel colours and fanzine-style fonts. In Claude’s adverts, under the slogan ‘keep thinking’, there are pensive models dressed as if they were heading to an underground art opening in Bushwick. Critic Kyle Chyka has termed this attempt to appear less aloof “taste-washing” – it’s like greenwashing but with “taste” – though it’s also a bit like brainwashing. In practice, robot factories try to project an aesthetic that appeals to humans – a visual language reminiscent of an organic bakery or handmade products – in order to appear less cold. To appear less cruel, they construct a craft-like, friendly and trendy façade, adopting a hipster vibe.

This campaign, which has been running since late spring, does not appear to be achieving its objectives—a situation somewhat reminiscent of the moment when Lockheed Martin, the missile manufacturer, appeared at Gay Pride with a banner featuring rainbow-coloured weapons, only to be turned into an anti-capitalist meme online. Following this attempt at coolness and the launch of branded merchandise—that is, gadgets—the marketing departments of AI companies are now seeking a fresh coat of paint to revamp their image. The current trend? Nature. OpenAI has therefore organised luxurious retreats for influencers—or, as they are now called, ‘creators’—under the name Summer Club. Participants stay in the woods and practise beekeeping, followed by painting workshops and cross-legged sessions on how best to use ChatGPT, then dinners on the lawns and marshmallows to roast over the fire. However, the internet immediately kicked up a fuss, with one commenter noting: ‘This forest will be cleared the day after tomorrow to build a data centre.’