The new AI hippies

Roughly at the same time as a parade of incongruous little robots was taking place in Milan’s Galleria, leaving Miuccia Prada and Alessandro Michele dumbfounded, with fashion disguised as AI – or, as Trump now calls it, ‘SI, super intelligence’ – another fashion show, no less incongruous, was taking place almost ten thousand kilometres away. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where AI – or SI – is taken very seriously, on the stage of ‘Meta Connect’, Facebook’s main annual event – in short, Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Leopolda’ – the host, whilst presenting a new little product, appeared in a rather unusual outfit.

Here he is, looking much more laid-back than in the past. Gone is the standard grey Brunello Cucinelli T-shirt; instead, he’s sporting one with the slogan, ‘Building is my love language’. Gone are all the chains, gone are the chunky watches that had recently made him look like a Pioltello-style workhorse. And in are some new, 1950s-style nerdy glasses. The result is an appearance that could suit a broad-based candidate for mayor of Milan, one who drinks sulphite-free wines and travels by bicycle. Zuckerberg was later seen mingling with various admirers after the event, and clarified that the glasses he was wearing were not recording video (only audio).  

However, the surprise was even greater when Alexandr Wang appeared on the same stage—formerly the world’s youngest self-made billionaire (that is, one who makes his own money, rather than inheriting it as is the case here). At 29, he founded his own AI start-up, 49 per cent of which he sold to Zuckerberg; but as it is somewhat early to retire, he is now head of artificial intelligence at Meta. Wang appeared on stage sporting a look that David Mack of CNN described as having a ‘gas station chic vibe’, something along the lines of ‘cool petrol station attendant’. Industry experts promptly calculated the cost of that unconventional outfit: $3,500. However, he quickly shared the actual price of his attire on social media: a camouflage T-shirt featuring a huge stag and the words ‘Lake Tahoe’, second-hand, $30; trousers, $150; Calvin Klein underpants, $5 (it’s unclear whether he bought them second-hand – which would be a bit much – or estimated their value by factoring in depreciation from new and other factors). Finally, on his feet, $60 Crocs. According to Slate, he looked like “someone’s cool, bisexual cousin” or “a precarious part-time DJ with a menthol cigarette habit”. There’s no shortage of jokes about AI or SI Fashion Week, but the issue is actually a very serious one.

We were accustomed to seeing Wang in a shirt, always immaculately smart, and this transformation spares no one. Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia, who used to wear nothing but polo shirts, now never leaves the house unless he is dressed head-to-toe in black leather, like a biker from Cinisello Balsamo. Jeff Bezos sports tight-fitting jumpers and mirrored sunglasses like a town clerk from Alcamo. Are they all going through a midlife crisis? Are they taking the mickey out of us? Do they know the end of the world is nigh and have therefore decided to let their most boorish side run wild?

According to the most astute analysts, there is more to it than that. At a time when all these tycoons – especially those involved in AI – are courting catastrophe, teetering on the brink of the apocalypse, and churning out products every day that could wipe out the human race, they need to appear more harmless and daft. In short, it is a variation on Umberto Eco’s old theory about Mike Bongiorno: the secret to success is to appear more daft than your average viewer (if he dresses like that, he can’t really wipe us all out).

It has already been reported here that several of Silicon Valley’s most unsettling companies are now turning their attention to fashion: Palantir, Peter Thiel’s digital surveillance firm, has added a jacket to its clothing range. Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril – a company that manufactures military drones for the Pentagon – dresses exclusively in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

The timing of this new trend towards hippie-chic AI is also rather suspicious. Palantir is diving into youth fashion just as it is supplying the ICE with software to track down migrants more effectively (at this point, it could produce a little dressing gown by Vannacci, the ‘remigration wrap dress’ – it would be a global hit). Meanwhile, Zuckerberg and colleagues appeared dressed as petrol station attendants on the same day that, at Meta Connect, they launched Muse Charm – a 5G-enabled keyring that resembles a Tamagotchi and can be worn around the neck, and which is poised to revolutionise the use of AI: equipped with a microphone, it listens to us and answers all our questions without the need for a phone, a computer or those Maria Rosaria Boccia-style glasses. 

In short, as we move towards a world where each of us will no longer talk on our phones but via our Tamagotchi keyrings, some of the new tycoons are shedding their skin once again and entering their third phase – the ‘neo-nerd’ phase: in the first phase they were proper nerds, sleeping in those famous garages and traipsing about everywhere in search of investors; then came wealth and a makeover. Finally, now comes the (fake) return to the slippers. Will that be enough to make them seem good and cute again?

Hippie-style looks then emerge when the cinema brings us far from benign portrayals of these characters: on Thursday, "The Social – The Price of Truth" ("The Social Reckoning") will be released (including in Italy), a sort of sequel to "The Social Network", once again centred on Mark Zuckerberg, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, but without David Fincher. The choice of actor to play the Facebook founder is already a statement in itself; it will in fact be Jeremy Strong, the inept and depressed son from “Succession”; Jesse Eisenberg, who played the role many years ago, refused to return because, in the meantime, Zuckerberg has come to horrify him and he no longer wishes to be confused with him. The new film, which premiered in New York on Sunday, focuses precisely on the most damaging aspects of Facebook, its impact on democracy, the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021, and so on.

And then there is "Artificial", which premiered yesterday at the New York Film Festival and is due for release in America at Christmas – an unflattering portrait of Sam Altman, the founder of ChatGPT, directed by Luca Guadagnino, a highly anticipated film that Amazon had sensationally dropped.

With another heated autumn on the horizon, the wealthy and powerful are launching a charm offensive. Not merely to avoid being lynched in the street (they have bodyguards and private security forces for that), but primarily to sell us yet more knick-knacks, from key rings upwards (and then there is Bezos: according to Slate, judging by the way he dresses, it appears as though he is wearing all of Amazon’s returned stock. He has no films coming out and is not launching any new gadgets. Perhaps he is simply a well-heeled chav – such is life).