The San Francisco Bay Area has ruled the technology industry for decades, from the early days of the personal computer to the social media boom.
now one New study from Brookings Institution Turns out that the rise of generic artificial intelligence, spurred by the popularity of the ChatGPT chatbot, could further tighten the Bay Area’s grip on tech.
The report, which the Washington think tank released Thursday, said “the winner takes the most” for generative AI jobs could broaden the geography. And the winners so far are San Francisco and San Jose, California.
While it may not come as a surprise, the Brookings report may help dispel the notion that smaller tech hubs like Austin, Texas or Miami will be home to the next generation of big tech companies. If anything, it suggests that the Bay Area’s hold on the tech industry may be tightening.
Brookings researchers found that of more than 380 metro areas in the United States, nearly a quarter of 2,200 generator AI job postings during the past year were in the Bay Area.
“This exciting new technology could lead to more clustering, and that’s a problem economically, demographically and for society,” said Mark Muro, author of the report and a senior fellow at Brookings Metro, a research unit focusing on cities and public policy.
The job posting follows a generic AI investment frenzy, which is heavily skewed toward the Bay Area. In addition to industry giants like Google and Meta, nine of the most valuable start-ups in generative AI are based in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, including OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Inflection AI, Databricks and Cerebrus, according to PitchBook, which tracks start-ups.
Job postings for AI work are not as common as postings for other technology skill sets, and AI specialization has been a popular and high-paying specialty for years. Tech centers outside the United States, such as Toronto and Cambridge, England, have also drawn their share of AI researchers.
Brookings researchers analyzed US job listings data collected by Lightcast, a labor analysis firm. Postings were counted as generative AI jobs if they contained at least one of three words: generative AI, ChatGPT or large language models. Large language models are used to build generative AI software.
New York ranks third in generative AI job postings. It is home to Hugging Face, a high-profile generator AI start-up, and several large tech companies have teams of AI researchers in the city.
As a center for many industries other than technology, New York can offer a glimpse of how technology will spread beyond the initial work being done in the Bay Area.
“Every major financial, media, advertising and consulting company is figuring out how they will adapt and use generic AI,” said Julie Samuels, executive director of Tech:NYC, a nonprofit industry group. “And that’s happening here every day.”
But the growing number of AI jobs in New York, many of which are high-paying, doesn’t address the challenge of democratizing technology across the country.
A series of other studies in recent months have assessed the potential economic impact of generative artificial intelligence, the technology engine behind chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard that can write business reports, computer code and poetry. That research has focused on the potential for generative AI to increase productivity, transform work, and automate millions of jobs.
Research is finding hundreds of new technologies Decades show that the leading centers of development generally retain a large amount of wealth and skill generated from them. and the new Brookings report is basically an update 2021 study On the geography of AI, which raised concerns about the agglomeration of AI-fuelled prosperity.
Nevertheless, the new report points to increased support and funding for “place-based industrial policy,” which seeks to increase economic prosperity in more places.
For example, under the Chips and Science Act signed into law last year, the federal government has made an initial appropriation of $500 million for its establishment. 20 Regional Technology Centers, Investments in AI technology and training are identified as a priority for those centres.
“We need to create an ecosystem of tech innovation in more communities across the country, especially those that have historically been overlooked,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in an emailed statement.
The National Science Foundation, working with government agencies and companies, has established 25 AI institutes across the country. $500 million of the program is being distributed in grants of $20 million to AI programs that conduct basic and applied research in areas such as climate change, agriculture and education.
Grants are being awarded to university-based institutions, including the University of Oklahoma, Ohio State University, Iowa State University, Washington State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University at Buffalo and University of California, Irvine.
With artificial intelligence, there may be an opportunity for a wider geographic distribution of wealth than with some previous technologies.
“We’re only talking about information, bits, and we don’t have to be in the same place to work on bits,” said Michael Littman, division director for information and intelligent systems at the National Science Foundation.
With the rise of AI, Dr. Littman said, “We really need more and more people to be involved in this change.”
The Brookings report calls for maintaining and expanding such policies. “We’re starting to see the recognition that the geography of technology is really important to the size of the opportunity in the US,” said Mr. Muro, co-author of the report.
