At SF's Spooky Streets Event, Be Afraid Of AI
We were jumpscared by a CEO who announced that we all needed to use AI day-to-day or receive a “does not meet expectations” performance review.
2ND STREET, SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco’s Spooky Streets event is returning to Mission and 2nd Street for Halloween, and this year’s scary theme is AI.
Spooky Streets features haunted houses and mazes filled with bone chilling visions of the AI-enhanced future. As the Halting Problem team went through the haunted house, we were terrified by customer support representatives who wailed about losing their jobs to AI. We passed through a hallway with projections of startup founders shouting, “It’s time to lock in! We’re in the arena! Everything will be disrupted!” We then rounded a corner and were jumpscared by a CEO who announced that we all needed to use AI day-to-day or receive a “does not meet expectations” performance review.
After that was a room of eerie AI slop. We were greeted with mist and discordant AI generated music. The walls were plastered with deranged billboards for AI startups like, “Replace your annoying coworker,” “AI doesn’t complain about 996,” and “Why do you need real friends when you can talk to ChatGPT?” Jack-o’-lanterns carved with grotesque AI art lit the hallway with Ghiblified portraits, jumbled text, and hands with too many fingers. A standing whiteboard had “AI IS NOT A BUBBLE” scrawled on it hundreds of times in red whiteboard marker. At the end of the hallway, the real Elon Musk emerged from the mist in a clown costume and flatly told us, “AGI is just around the corner and will change everything.”
SF Parks and Rec director Ryan Hernandez told us the inspiration for this year’s Spooky Streets theme came from interviewing local downtown workers and residents about their biggest fears. “In previous years, people were scared about being attacked by a homeless person, getting canceled on Twitter, or getting laid off,” he said. “But just like everything else in San Francisco these days, all they could talk about this year was AI, AI, AI.”
This year’s event is sponsored by a variety of venture capital firms, and they even helped frighten the guests: as we left the haunted house, a mob of VC associates swarmed us to pitch us on taking their money, forcing us to push our way to the exit.
Spooky Streets runs from Thursday October 30 to November 2. It is located on 2nd Street between Market and Howard Streets. Not recommended for children under 10 years of age or programmers over 35 years of age who may find the content distressing.