Making Tech Headlines · Page 5
Tech Week Checks Whether the Boom Has a Coat Check
· New York time
NPR visited San Francisco Tech Week to examine how people in Silicon Valley feel about the AI boom. The mood combined excitement about the technology with concern about when the surge might end, an unusually efficient pairing of enthusiasm and contingency planning. That tension matters because a technology can be useful while the commercial excitement around it becomes difficult to measure. Confidence in the tools, confidence in a company and confidence in the wider boom are different judgments, even when an event badge encourages them to mingle. A gathering built around networking makes those distinctions especially visible. People can be sincerely curious about new capabilities and equally curious about whether everyone else remains curious enough to keep the momentum going. Optimism becomes both a belief and part of the room’s operating temperature. The result resembles a party at which guests admire the music while discreetly locating their shoes. No prediction is needed to appreciate the posture. It is possible to enjoy an ambitious technology without assuming that every business surrounding it has solved gravity. Silicon Valley’s challenge is to discuss both ideas without making either one sound like a failure of enthusiasm.
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