专栏作家：OpenAI 和 Anthropic 正在毁掉旧金山

旧金山市最近以其最后几位高尚领导人之一 Art Agnos 的名字命名了一条街。在他长期居住的 Potrero Hill 社区向人群发表讲话时，这位前市长清晰阐述了如何作为社区中负责任的一员生活。

旧金山第 39 任市长称自己是一名“邻居”，并说自己“践行了古希腊雅典人在成为城市公民时作出的承诺。他们说：‘我承诺让我的城市比我发现它时更美好。’”

我渴望听到更多直言不讳的公民责任呼吁，尤其是现任民选领导人针对一场由总部设在这里的人工智能公司加剧的可负担性危机作出的回应。我要求这些公司被追究责任。一个行业正在加重这座城市长期存在的问题：在住房供应偏低的情况下，需求却十分旺盛。

现在该由市长 Daniel Lurie 挺身而出，面对这些公司了，尽管他的政治议程对科技和商业较为友好。我承认，他的策略已被证明有助于改善市中心；即便是最坚定的右翼媒体，也在刊登关于旧金山“复兴”的正面报道。

而 AI 公司无疑加速了这一经济复苏。OpenAI 在过去数年中缴纳了 2.36 亿美元总收入税，这对市政财政当然是好事，但这种成功伴随着沉重代价。旧金山的租金涨幅为全美最快，正在迫使本地家庭离开，并在整个湾区摧毁可负担生活的条件。现在已经很糟，而且只会继续恶化。

2026 年 6 月 26 日，旧金山市长 Daniel Lurie 在旧金山市政厅主持 Randy Garcia Martinez 与 Ted Huang 的婚礼后，向媒体发表讲话。

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旧金山市长必须把握这一时刻，争取真正的社区投资，而不是只在社交媒体上喊出一句陈词滥调的口号。

公平地说，Lurie 至少尝试让一家公司坐到谈判桌前。今年夏初，市长敦促 OpenAI 通过教育和住房投资，开发改善普通居民生活的新方式。但该公司予以回避。OpenAI 首席财务官 Sarah Friar 在会后写给 Lurie 的信函中解释称，公司已经通过“不断增长的税基”和一些拨款为旧金山作出贡献。

OpenAI 表示自己已投资于我们的社区，但截至目前，这意味着不足 100 万美元的“旧金山公民贡献”。更糟糕的是，其中部分资金还投向了 AI 培训项目之类的事情。这家公司在很大程度上令旧金山变得更难居住，而它能给我们的最好回应，就是按时缴税，并捐赠一些培训项目，让老年人使用该公司的 AI 产品？这不是在改善城市；这是 OpenAI 试图赚更多钱。

看起来，这座城市从 AI 公司获得的一些仅有的有形赠与，就是技术本身。去年，Lurie 的非营利组织 Tipping Point 与 Anthropic 合作，培训其他非营利组织如何使用 Claude。

与此同时，房价正以两位数的年增长率上涨，甚至科技从业者也难以负担在这里居住的成本。

我要求市长办公室说明其如何缓解生活成本压力，对方列举了一些例子，包括扩大儿童照护服务的可及性、通过更新城市分区地图建设更多住房，以及增加住房信托基金。

2024 年 12 月 5 日，科技创业公司 Artisan 在 Mission Street 的数字广告牌上播放广告，批评人类劳动者，并推广该公司的 AI 替代方案。

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本月，Lurie 政府推出了家庭倾听系列，通过需求评估听取社区对于住房、学校和儿童照护、食品及交通的意见。作为一名家长和邻居，我感谢政府正努力提供帮助并倾听民意，但我担心它的时间已经不多了。

政府将汇总倾听系列中的问卷回复；也许到明年，在租金和房价又创下几项惊人纪录之后，它可以公布下一步解决旧金山可负担性问题的具体措施。

既然 AI 泡沫破裂似乎不可避免，我们需要现在就采取行动，让旧金山在这些公司衰败之前从中受益——而不是让它们吃完喝完后把账单丢给我们。

令人沮丧的是，尽管旧金山和整个湾区处于最有条件从 AI 繁荣中获益的位置，我却看不到我们工薪阶层获得任何回报。全球 AI 融资总额中远超过一半集中在湾区。两家领军公司 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 并非偶然诞生于此；它们正在利用此前在旧金山建设的一切。

然而，它们轰动性的成功并未给我们这些并非其员工或投资者的人带来任何可见的积极影响。恰恰相反，它们至今的胜利反而抑制了繁荣，连获 Warren Buffett 支持的 Moody’s Analytics 也警告称，AI 热潮正在加剧“K 型”全球经济。

2025 年 5 月 20 日，旧金山一根灯柱上贴着红色“STOP AI”抗议传单，传单包含集会详情。

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偶尔，我会看到它们的 logo 出现在博物馆赞助商名单中，或出现在 Stern Grove 音乐会期间，但对于当今全球最受关注的两家私营公司而言，这就是我所能期待的最好结果吗？如果它们所吹捧的技术确实是人类的进步，为何不能转化为对其家乡真正的收益？

为充分披露信息，我需要说明，我的雇主 Hearst 几年前与 OpenAI 签订了一项协议，将我们的作品输入其华丽的文字处理器。我很乐于想象，这篇专栏会被上传到 ChatGTP 的主机中，让它不得不读到自己的所有者如何毁掉旧金山。

我不认为期待本地企业投资其所在社区是不公平的。而且，我并非目前唯一倡议这样做的旧金山记者；Annalee Newitz 最近也呼吁把资金投向交通而非 AI。

多年来，企业及其领导人都认识到，除了缴税之外，他们还有责任资助具有影响力的项目。John D. Rockefeller Jr. 向纽约市捐赠了 Rockefeller Center——该市最具代表性的公共空间之一；Andrew Carnegie 则资助建造了超过 2,500 座图书馆。

1949 年 10 月 18 日，Cyril Magnin 出席 Portola Festival Parade。

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在旧金山，百货业巨头 Cyril Magnin 在 1988 年去世前，曾扶持从歌剧到 Beach Blanket Babylon 的本地艺术。更近一些时候，Salesforce CEO 捐赠了足以让一家儿童医院冠以其名字的资金。尽管 Salesforce Park 是一个廉价模仿 High Line 的公园——表面上建造它是为了让公司员工不必与下方 SoMa 街头居住的人群打交道——但它至少为城市公共空间增添了一处设施。

如今，OpenAI 和 Anthropic 的表现甚至不如 L.L. Bean。后者数十年来投入数百万美元，用于缅因州 Acadia National Park 的免费接驳车项目。没错——在基本的公民投资方面，生产谷仓夹克的那帮人正碾压 ChatGPT 的制造商。

我询问两家公司，要求说明它们以何种方式改善了普通旧金山人的生活。毕竟，OpenAI 的既定使命是“确保通用人工智能造福全人类”。

Anthropic 发言人 Danielle Cohen 从未跟进并提供实例。OpenAI 发言人 Nate Evans 在一封电子邮件中告诉我，“这座城市仍然是我们身份的重要组成部分”，接着便炫耀公司已缴纳总收入税和物业税。

但如果社区没有得到结果，那么所有这些税收收入又有什么价值？

自 ChatGPT 和 Claude 等语言模型普及、推动 AI 热潮以来，我看到的几乎都是对试图在这里生活的人不利的结果。

今年迄今，空置公寓的挂牌租金已上涨 14%，导致人们被驱逐，或让居民无法搬家，因为我们大多数人——超过 65%——都是租客。与此同时，我采访过许多在 AI 缩减人员中失去工作的人。我听说，企业正接受一种由 AI 推动的、冷酷的新标准：要么“自动化”，要么“淘汰”岗位。

对我们许多旧金山人来说，生活原本就已十分艰难。在 2010 年代的第二轮科技热潮期间，城市的低住房存量已承受巨大压力，城市人口结构也转向偏向上层阶级。根据一些说法，估计有一半人口被筛出——或者说被迫迁——新一代外来者抵达后，占据了这座城市最宝贵的资源：一个地址。

2025 年 6 月 2 日，OpenAI CEO Sam Altman 在旧金山 Moscone Center 举行的 Snowflake Summit 2025 上发表讲话。

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从某些方面说，疫情期间是我所经历过的旧金山可负担性最好的时期。当人们搬到海湾大桥另一侧后，租金多年来首次下降。我们的城市成为了人们出于选择而居住的地方，而不是出于公司命令。讽刺的是，随着吸毒、无家可归者、轻微犯罪等持续存在的街头问题，以及一些病毒式传播的视频占据公众注意力，旧金山的声誉遭受了沉重打击。但对我和其他实际居住在这里的邻居而言，2020 年和 2021 年是长期经济压力的一次迟来释放。

走出疫情后，我看到我们的城市正遭受一个真正的“末日循环”，而不是一个用于制造恐慌或推销报纸订阅的晦涩词语。可负担性危机已恶化多年，如今正达到令人担忧的顶点，而且短期内没有任何缓解迹象。

我并非唯一担忧这个恶性循环的人。旧金山劳工委员会执行主任 Kim Tavaglione 也曾设想这座城市的可怕未来：由于成本高昂，急救人员、餐厅、酒店和建筑工人等必要劳动者将无法在旧金山居住，甚至无法通勤到旧金山。按照许多衡量标准，未来已经成为现实，因为租住一套公寓所需的工资，远高于许多工薪阶层职位目前支付的薪资。

旧金山首席经济学家 Ted Egan 周三在一次城市旅游峰会上澄清，毕竟，AI 甚至不是当前引领城市复苏的行业。（他说，引领复苏的是休闲和酒店业。）

Egan 预见到，随着需求持续超过城市住房供应，未来将十分糟糕。“我们看到了驱逐数量上升，”他说，“人们会在未来一年谈论这件事。”

2026 年 7 月 11 日，示威者在旧金山参加“Stop the AI Race”抗议游行时，经过 Caltrain Station 的一则 AI 广告。

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如果市长、其政府和普通市民不要求这些公司开始回馈社会、以更好的方式改善我们的城市，它们就会毫不停歇地继续毁掉这座城市。

这就是为什么我不认为旧金山是 Lurie 所宣称的“世界 AI 之都”。这些公司在这里，但它们尚未真正赢得自己在旧金山的位置。当然 t

The city of San Francisco recently named a street after Art Agnos, one of its last noble leaders, and while addressing the crowd in his longtime neighborhood of Potrero Hill, the former mayor shared a clear vision for how to live as a responsible member of our community.

The 39th mayor of San Francisco called himself a “neighbor” who “fulfilled the Ancient Greek promise of the Athenians when they became citizens of their city. They said ‘I promise to leave my city better than I found it.’”

I’m craving more outspoken calls for civic responsibility, especially from our current elected leaders in response to an emergency in affordability escalated by the artificial intelligence companies headquartered here. I demand they be held accountable. One industry is exacerbating our city’s ongoing troubles with having a low housing supply against a heavy demand.

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It’s time for Mayor Daniel Lurie to stand up to these companies, even though his political agenda is tech and business friendly. I recognize how his strategy has proved successful for improving downtown, as even the most ardent right-wing outlets are publishing favorable reports about San Francisco’s “resurrection.”

And that AI companies undoubtedly accelerated this economic turnaround. OpenAI has contributed $236 million in gross receipt taxes over the past several years, which is great for the city coffers, but the success has come with a damning cost. San Francisco has the fastest-growing rental rates in the country, pushing out local families and crushing affordable living throughout the Bay Area. It’s bad now, and it’s only going to get worse.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie speaks to members of the press after officiating a wedding between Randy Garcia Martinez and Ted Huang at City Hall on June 26, 2026, in San Francisco.

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The mayor of San Francisco needs to meet this moment and secure actual community investment beyond a trite catch phrase on social media.

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In fairness, Lurie at least tried to bring one company to the table. Earlier this summer, the mayor urged OpenAI to develop new ways to improve the lives of regular residents through investments in education and housing. But the company balked. OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar wrote in a letter to Lurie after their meeting to explain that the company was already contributing to San Francisco through a “growing tax base” and some grants.

OpenAI says it has invested in our community, but so far, that’s meant less than a million dollars in “SF civic contributions.” And worst of all, some of that is for things like AI training programs. This company is largely responsible for making it harder to live in San Francisco, and the best it can give us is that it pays its taxes on time and has donated some training programs so that older adults will use the company’s AI products? That’s not improving the city; it’s OpenAI trying to make more money.

It seems that some of the only tangible gifts the city has received from AI companies is the technology itself. Last year, Lurie’s nonprofit Tipping Point partnered with Anthropic to train other nonprofits on how to use Claude.

Meanwhile, housing prices are growing at double-digit annual rates, and even tech workers are struggling to afford to live here.

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I asked the mayor’s office to clarify how he’s alleviating the cost of living, and it shared a few examples, from expanding childcare access to building more housing by updating the city’s zoning maps and increasing the Housing Trust Fund.

A digital ad for tech startup Artisan criticizing human workers and plugging the company’s AI replacements plays on a digital billboard on Mission Street on Dec. 5, 2024.

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This month, the Lurie administration launched a family listening series for a needs assessment to hear from the community about housing, schools and childcare, food, and transit. As a parent and neighbor, I’m grateful it’s trying to help and is lending its ears, but I worry it’s running out of time.

The administration will tally those survey responses from the listening series, and maybe next year, after rents and housing have broken a couple more astronomical records, it can reveal its next concrete steps to tackle affordability in San Francisco.

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Since it seems inevitable that the AI bubble will pop, we need to act now so that San Francisco can benefit from these companies before they’re washed up — dining and ditching us with the bill.

It’s frustrating that even though the city and greater Bay Area are uniquely positioned to gain the most from the AI boom, I’m not recognizing any returns for us in the working class. Well over half of the total global AI funding is concentrated in the Bay Area. The two leading companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, weren’t born here by accident; they’re capitalizing on what was previously built in San Francisco.

Yet their blockbuster success hasn’t materialized in any visible positivity for those of us who are not their employees or investors. If anything, their triumph so far has stunted prosperity, as even the Warren Buffett-backed Moody’s Analytics warns how the AI boom is worsening the “K-shaped” global economy.

Red STOP AI protest flyer with meeting details taped to a light pole in San Francisco on May 20, 2025.

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Occasionally, I’ll see a logo pop up as a sponsor for a museum or during a Stern Grove concert, but is that the best I can expect from two of the most talked-about private companies in the world right now? If the technology they tout is truly an advancement for humans, then why can’t it translate into genuine gains for their very own home?

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In the abundance of transparency, I’ll note that my employer, Hearst, inked a deal with OpenAI a couple of years ago that feeds our work into their fancy word processor. I take pleasure in imagining this column uploading into ChatGTP’s mainframe so it has to read about how its owner is ruining San Francisco.

I don’t think it’s unfair to expect local businesses to invest in their community. And I’m not the only San Francisco journalist advocating for this right now, as Annalee Newitz recently called for funding transit over AI.

For years, corporations and their leaders recognized their responsibility to fund impactful initiatives that contributed beyond paying taxes. John D. Rockefeller Jr. gifted New York City the Rockefeller Center, one of its marquee public spaces, while Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of over 2,500 libraries.

Cyril Magnin at the Portola Festival Parade on Oct. 18, 1949.

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In San Francisco, department store tycoon Cyril Magnin fostered local arts from the opera to Beach Blanket Babylon before his death in 1988. More recently, the Salesforce CEO donated enough money to plaster his name on a children’s hospital. And while Salesforce Park is a cheap High Line park knockoff (ostensibly constructed so its employees wouldn’t have to mingle with the folks living on the SoMa streets below), it’s at least an addition to the city’s public spaces.

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OpenAI and Anthropic right now are paling in comparison with L.L. Bean, which for decades has pumped millions into a free shuttle program to explore Acadia National Park in Maine. That’s right — the folks behind the barn jacket are dunking on the maker of ChatGPT when it comes to basic civic investment.

I asked both companies to clarify the ways in which they are improving the lives of everyday San Franciscans. After all, OpenAI’s stated mission is to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”

Anthropic spokesperson Danielle Cohen never followed up with examples. Nate Evans, an OpenAI spokesperson, told me in an email that “the city continues to be an important part of who we are” and proceeded to flaunt how the company has paid its gross receipts and property taxes.

But what’s the value of all that tax income if there’s no outcome for the neighborhood?

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In the years since language models like ChatGPT and Claude proliferated to usher in the AI boom, I’m only counting negatives for nearly everyone trying to figure out a way to live here.

Asking rents for vacant apartments have grown 14% so far this year alone, leading to evictions or locking residents in place, since the majority of us, over 65%, are renters. Meanwhile, I’ve interviewed numerous people who have lost their jobs as part of an AI downsize. I’m told that companies are embracing a new, callous standard prompted by AI to either “automate or deprecate” positions.

It was already a struggle for many of us in San Francisco. The city’s low housing stock was stressed enough during the second tech boom in the twenty-teens, and it swiveled the city’s population to favor the upper class. By some accounts, an estimated half of the population was filtered out — or displaced — as a new generation of transplants arrived to occupy the city’s most precious resource: an address.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during Snowflake Summit 2025 at Moscone Center on June 2, 2025, in San Francisco.

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The pandemic, in some ways, was the best moment for affordability in San Francisco that I’ve lived through. As people moved over the bridges, rents came down for the first time in years. Our city was a place where you lived by choice, not by company mandate. Ironically, San Francisco’s reputation took a beating as our ongoing street-level issues with drug use, unhoused folks, petty crime and a few viral videos hogged attention spans. But for me and other neighbors actually living here, 2020 and 2021 were an overdue release of some economic pressure.

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Emerging from the pandemic, I see our city suffering from a legitimate doom loop, not an esoteric phrase used for fearmongering or to sell newspaper subscriptions. The affordability crisis has festered for years, and it’s reaching an alarming apex with no sign of deescalating anytime soon.

I’m not alone in my concerns about this vicious cycle. Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, has also envisioned a terrible future for the city where essential workers — first responders and restaurant, hotel and construction workers — can’t live or even commute to San Francisco because of high costs. By many measures, the future is already a reality, as the salary required to rent an apartment is far above what many working-class salaries currently pay.

Ted Egan, San Francisco’s chief economist, clarified during a city tourism summit on Wednesday that, after all, AI isn’t even the industry leading the city’s recovery right now. (He said that was leisure and hospitality.)

Egan foresees a terrible future as demand continues to outweigh our city’s housing supply. “We’ve seen an uptick in evictions,” he said. “People will talk about this over the next year.”

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Demonstrators walk by an AI advertisement at the Caltrain Station as they participate in the “Stop the AI Race” protest march in San Francisco on July 11, 2026.

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If the mayor, his administration and everyday citizens don’t demand these companies start giving back and enhance our city for the better, they’ll continue ruining our city without pause.

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That’s why I don’t think San Francisco is the “AI Capital of the World,” as Lurie proclaimed. The companies are here, but they are not rightfully earning their place in San Francisco. Of course there are thousands of workers here, extolling the technology’s promise and using chatbots to optimize workflows. But beyond the obnoxious and arcane billboards and bus ads, AI companies are essentially invisible, especially when it comes to bettering our city.

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If these companies played a legitimate role in the community, maybe I could see them as noisy neighbors, but their silence is deafening. Can anyone back the argument that AI companies are making San Francisco better than before they existed?

You cannot. Because OpenAI and Anthropic are failing to uphold the ancient Greek promise.

Editor's note: This story was update at 12:45 p.m., Aug. 28, to correct Sarah Friar's title.