jasmine sun
@jasmine.bsky.social
anthropologist of disruption / writing jasmi.news / san francisco
“I think a lot of the public backlash to AI isn’t explained by people thinking the technology has no use at all…It’s AI as sort of an avatar for a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires’ ability to impose their vision of the world onto everybody else without their consent.” @jasmine.bsky.social
Opinion | The A.I. Giants Weren’t Prepared for This (Gift Article)
Jasmine Sun, a writer covering technology, takes us into the backlash against A.I. data centers.
nytimes.com
"Until the deeper cultural problems are addressed, the data center backlash will only recreate itself in other forms. If people are this angry at a building sitting and paying taxes on unused land, something deep has gone very wrong."
No Data Centers In My Backyard
money, power, and populism in the AI buildout
jasmi.news
Terrific and uniquely humanizing reporting by @jasmine.bsky.social on data center politics in small town Wisconsin. There’s undoubtedly misinformation involved, but far more apparent is the clumsy and secretive approach of the big companies involved.
No Data Centers In My Backyard
money, power, and populism in the AI buildout
jasmi.news
Starting a new initiative this summer, weekly live events on Substack about the core issues facing our democracy, featuring great speakers. This Thursday, 1PM ET, an hour with the great @jasmine.bsky.social on all things work, AI, and the emerging populist backlash. Event link in replies.
Really thoroughly reported piece here, impressively done www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/o...
Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass
nytimes.com
I found this enlightening and disturbing, with an unexpected silver lining: “The technology is an opportunity for gutsy politicians… to push ideas that are usually too radical for moderate voters to swallow.” (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/o... Kudos to @jasmine.bsky.social
Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass
nytimes.com
AI is moving faster than anyone can keep up with — including the people building it. So we're bringing in reinforcements. On April 9, join us for a live taping of “Pacific Standard Time," with journalist @jasmine.bsky.social to make sense of the chaos. Enter to win tickets: bit.ly/3QfhdYU
"Sam Altman has predicted that large language models will soon be capable of 'fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics" — but, "might be able to extrude only something equivalent to 'a real poet’s okay poem'" @jasmine.bsky.social on what sets writing apart
The Human Skill That Eludes AI
Why can’t language models write well?
theatlantic.com
the real AI alignment problem is Pete Hegseth. here’s my explainer & take on Anthropic vs. the Pentagon — jasmi.news/p/ai-pentagon
AI vs. the Pentagon
the real alignment problem is Pete Hegseth
jasmi.news
Today’s pod is with one of my favorite writers covering the culture of technology in the Bay Area. @jasmine.bsky.social came on to describe the AI boom/hype from ground level in SF and we get deep into what the people building these tools actually believe www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...
What Do the People Building AI Believe?
Inside San Francisco’s AI subculture
theatlantic.com
incredibly fun lede by @jasmine.bsky.social about the DCA perimeter rule (a favorite topic of mine) and the rest of her observations about SF/DC divide and similarities jasmi.news/p/ai-populis...
🌻 my week with the AI populists
a Washington DC scene report
jasmi.news
If you're intrigued by Claude Code but also feel overwhelmed, I can recommend this more personal account of trying it out by Jasmine Sun: jasmi.news/p/claude-co...
🌻 claude code psychosis
are your problems software-shaped?
jasmi.news
A self-identified “engineer” went viral on Reddit (& on social media) w/damning allegations about one of the food delivery apps. Then they circulated a legit-looking “internal document” to journalists, including me. The whole thing was an AI-generated scam intended to smear Uber. Here’s the story
An AI-Generated Reddit Post Fooled the Internet. It Was Only Half of an Elaborate Scam.
I traded Signal messages with someone purporting to have serious dirt on Uber. They used AI to make the whole thing up.
open.substack.com
The Peptide Craze in the US. It's reckless and unfounded. erictopol.substack.com/p/the-peptid... Today @nytimes.com @jasmine.bsky.social goes deep into the use in Silicon Valley, the supply from China, and the reasons this biohacking is popular t.co/lQXUBHNEaG
I’m quoted in today’s @nytimes.com on the "Chinese peptides" trend in SF. She asked about the "founder mindset" applied to biology. My take: "The entrepreneurial parallel isn't funding a scrappy start-up. It's wiring money to an unregistered offshore entity based on a pitch deck." buff.ly/n5nEob
Reporting live from the legendary Bimbo’s in SF, @elirosenberg.bsky.social on the Substack AI debate party with @jasmine.bsky.social, @bcmerchant.bsky.social and others, where the vibe was … surprisingly congenial? www.hardresetmedia.com/p/live-debat...
Live debates are in, but winning them is another story
At a buzzy Substack party in San Francisco, four debates on A.I. showed that team human has plenty of fight in it, even amid the boom. And some goodwill on its side, to boot.
hardresetmedia.com
jasmi.news/p/ai-friends... This is very good, and close in some ways to the Fourcade and @kjhealy.co account of social media, under which it's co-constituted by users rather than being forced on them.
AI friends too cheap to meter
“Let me date my chatbot I’m almost 30 and doing well”
jasmi.news
"If the world is going to split into the techno kings and the techno peasants, I better prove that I'm gonna stay on top" - @jasmine.bsky.social describing veiled AI anxiety in San Francisco for The Indicator
Everywhere you look these days in San Francisco, there's a new zine, magazine, literary journal, or newspaper. At Chat Room: Analog on Nov. 19, @cydhayes.bsky.social will sit down with @jasmine.bsky.social, @laurenmarkham.bsky.social, and @ovillalon.bsky.social to discuss SF's print boom.
The Print Party: The publication as an object for community
Announcing our first panel for Chat Room: Analog on Nov. 19
sf.gazetteer.co
A rare first-person account of experiencing AI-induced psychosis, from a young tech founder who "should have known better" joinreboot.org/p/ai-psychosis
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are racing to grab a chunk of AI capital and equity as it races upward. Meanwhile the rest of us face a dilemma: "Are you going to be the piggy or be the one making the slop?"
“Neo-hustle-culture is a modern twist on Weber’s Protestant ethic: if the world is soon to be divided into the blessed and the damned, the techno-kings and the techno-peasants, anxious technologists should work as hard as they can to prove they deserve to end up on the right side of that divide.”
David Roberts@volts.wtf · 10mo agoA fantastic guide to the current terminology & thinking of the Silicon Valley bros, who are riding high at the moment. (I really can not exaggerate how aesthetically & morally repulsive I find every bit of this.)
The latest episode of @kaiserkuo.bsky.social's essential Sinica podcast features @jasmine.bsky.social who is a great China tech watcher. This was one of the topics that they discussed and I very much enjoyed it. It's totally worth your valuable time.
Jasmine Sun on Silicon Valley through a Chinese Mirror
This week on Sinica, co-host Tianyu Fang makes his debut on the show to join me in interviewing his Stanford classmate and talented writer Jasmine Sun, who studies the anthropology of disruption.
sinicapodcast.com
really good exploration of silicon valley's collective nervous breakdown as its anxieties about deskilling, diminishing returns, etc manifest themselves in self-flattering memes. total sweaty desperation. look at my leading industry dawg we're all going to die
are you high-agency or an NPC?
AI anxiety and the new language of silicon valley
jasmi.news
Congrats to @jasmine.bsky.social and all our friends at Reboot for 5 years of bold, optimistic thinking! We applaud this renewed manifesto, centering human agency in how technology is created and developed. Here’s to 5 more!
By And For Technologists
Reboot's new mission for 2025 and beyond
joinreboot.org
Stumbled into @jasmine.bsky.social's Kernel vol 5 launch party for joinreboot.org last night and boy oh boy was it a needle trip moment. Just when I was losing hope in finding the thread of moral imperative in the Bay Area tech scene! On to Open Sauce conf this weekend.
