When Somerset Dwyer found a two-bedroom apartment in Nob Hill, she felt she had done the impossible. Having grown up four blocks from her new place, she would be moving to her first apartment after college, returning to San Francisco for the first time as an adult. She was excited to live in a neighborhood she called the epitome of “Old San Francisco,” with its diners and gritty bars she remembered from her childhood. But when she got there, she found that something in the neighborhood’s spirit had changed.
“All of it was gone. Everyone works from home, and there’s no sense of community,” Dwyer said. A new wave of artificial intelligence-fueled, tech-related gentrification was seeping into the few spots of San Francisco left untouched, and for Dwyer, “It made it hard to connect to the city again.”
Although the world may be watching San Francisco as the leading voice in the AI conversation, a lot of our young people, perhaps surprisingly, hate it. In a city with a long history of attracting young people for its rich artistic and progressive history, some say artificial intelligence represents everything the city stands against.
On Wednesday evenings at Kiitos Cocktail Lounge and Sports Bar on Capp Street, a small group of people meet for drinks. You spot them immediately, dramatically ranging in age, ethnicity and other demographics and dressed in matching bright red T-shirts with bold white lettering: STOP AI.
The grassroots activist organization formed in 2024 in Oakland but now meets all across the Bay Area. Stop AI attendees span generations, all inspired by witnessing the negative consequences of AI in their day-to-day lives.
A former software engineer whose job was replaced by AI is now “taunted” with billboards for AI startups that say they will “stop hiring humans.” An art teacher in his 70s is worried about the future of visual art when everything can be replicated. And Valielza Huynh-O’Keefe, a 27-year-old County Council member of the San Francisco Green Party, wants to prevent AI from seeping more into her life than it already has.
“I think for Gen Z, I think that feeling of nihilism is strong, I think the assumption that we like AI is generally misplaced. Gen Z wants to do something about it, but I think there is just a lack of political direction,” Huynh-O’Keefe says.
A recent poll by Gallup backs this up. While about half of the Gen Zers polled reported using AI daily or weekly, skepticism and backlash are climbing. Young adults entering the workforce were concerned about job replacement, and close to half surveyed said the risks of adopting AI in the workplace outweighed its benefits. Only 15% said they saw AI as a net benefit.
Huynh-O’Keefe, originally from Las Vegas, moved to San Francisco in 2024 with her partner, who had gotten into medical school at UCSF. She immediately fell in love with the city, especially its public transit system, but noticed that with the advent of AI, the city became “less welcoming.” She lives in an apartment complex in Mission Bay, right across the street from the Open AI headquarters. When she saw Stop AI protesting outside, she felt inspired to get involved, especially as the group wasn’t tied to a particular political party.
“The issue of AI, the issue of data centers in particular, has been able to band together people from across the political spectrum. It’s not really a Democrat or Republican issue,” she continued. “I know a lot of Gen Z are looking at trades and physical occupations that are going to be more difficult to automate and are sort of opting out of this generic higher education model.”
There has been a recent movement of Gen Z graduates booing speakers who mention AI at ceremonies over this past graduation season. At the University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was heckled when he said that this generation will “help shape AI.” At the University of Central Florida, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield was met with stadium-wide disdain after comparing the rise of AI to the Industrial Revolution.
Recent grads may have a right to resent it. Gen Z is “losing the most in the AI economy” according to recent studies. Economists estimate that AI substitution and slow hiring have erased a net of 11,000 U.S. jobs per month, according to a Goldman Sachs AI Adoption Tracker.
“Rich and powerful people in this city are all for it, obviously,” Huynh-O’Keefe said. “But regular people, we want to slow it down.”
When asked about the world Gen Z was inheriting, the group at the gathering on Capp Street discussed Daniel Alejandro Moreno-Gama, the 20-year-old who allegedly threw a molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s San Francisco home earlier this year. One member repeated Moreno-Gama’s quote: “Young people use ChatGPT to cheat, before they realize that they are cheating themselves.”
Other Gen Z San Franciscans described a similar pattern: embracing AI at first because it seemed helpful or out of fear of falling behind, only to become disillusioned with it.
A 23-year-old personal assistant who grew up in San Francisco, who was granted anonymity for this story in accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy due to fear of employment repercussions, told SFGATE about the intense pressure to keep up. She said when she first started her job, she felt so inexperienced that she would have taken advice from anywhere, so AI seemed helpful to her.
“But as I’ve become more experienced, I find it’s wasting my time. I’m so much better off talking to people and calling and asking questions.” She continued. “It’s a weird balance trying to adapt to this tool. I feel this pressure to adapt to ‘the future,’ but the future is underwhelming. It’s like having a dumb friend.”
She said that she is pressured by her boss to use the tool to catch up, and when she is not sure how to complete a task, he will pull out an AI chatbot in front of her and instead “ask the little assistant in his pocket.” “The older generations are the ones who are amazed by it,” she said. “We are the ones who are disappointed.”
“I think the embracement of AI is going to be one of the great divides of our generation,” she continued, saying that as a lifelong San Franciscan, she is already seeing the impacts of that divide. “When I find out someone is working in AI, I judge their character completely. Our childhoods were full of characters and communities who have been here for a long time. We’re seeing a new feeling arise out of this AI boom that’s not concerned with our culture.”
She said she has even noticed these changes going out to familiar bars. “There are so many people our age who now live in North Beach and are changing it. They work in AI with a frat boy finance bro aesthetic, and it’s changing our city.” she said. “The city is now flooded by a new kind of young person.”
A recent study by CoworkingCafe stated that San Francisco secured the No. 2 spot for recent college graduates for earning potential in 2026, trailing only Atlanta. The city offers the highest median income for young professionals among large U.S. cities at $110,135.
The techie culture wars with San Francisco locals is nothing new; in fact, that divide has arguably become emblematic of the city itself. In the 1990s, the dot-com boom sparked a massive economic redirection for the city, and in the early 2010s, Silicon Valley social media hubs rapidly gentrified lower-income neighborhoods like SoMa and the Mission. But to many, this AI wave feels different. As more AI companies prepare to go public and mint a fresh class of millionaires from their employee ranks, the wealth flooding into San Francisco has done little to close an inequality gap that remains among the worst in the nation.
To many young San Franciscans, there is a relentless and inescapable nature to the rise of AI. Even if it hasn’t affected Gen Z professionally, it might appear in their dating world. Known, the first AI-powered dating app, markets itself as being specifically for San Franciscans. Giselle Perez, a 29-year-old San Francisco native who lives in the Mission, tried the app because she was curious about who it would match her with.
But once she discovered more about the premise, she was discouraged. She found out that AI generates a profile for you from a couple of questions, and that you are not able to edit your profile once it is automated. You are matched solely based on generative AI, and you are not able to contact your date beforehand.
After contacting the founder to share some of her concerns, she was dismissed. Her negative review was promptly deleted overnight, and Perez felt increasingly frustrated.
“I was told this was an app for San Franciscans, or at least locals, and I was curious to see if that was true. But it’s not created by anyone from here, and it certainly isn’t for us. It’s already hard to date here as a local, and AI is making it harder.” Perez said. “AI companies do not represent San Franciscans, and they should not claim to.”
Dwyer moved from her Nob Hill apartment to an artist’s loft in an industrial corner of the Bayview sometime last year. She says she feels a lot better there. “We wanted more space and cheaper rent,” Dwyer explained. “And it’s closer to a version of San Francisco I remember. Our place could so easily be converted into an AI startup. I’m really glad it’s not,” Dwyer said.
Her new spot misses the shadow of a massive AI billboard off the 101 freeway exit by a few hundred yards. “It’s strange how it follows you,” Dwyer said. “I don’t know who those billboards are talking to, but it’s certainly not my neighbors.”
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