In an opulent ballroom on a Saturday night, the classic pump-up anthem “Eye of the Tiger” blared as artificial intelligence enthusiasts tapped away on their keyboards. This was a hackathon — an event where participants have a set amount of time to collaborate on a project they present to the crowd — at a sprawling mansion about 30 minutes south of San Francisco.
As a professional freelance photographer, I’ve spent the past decade documenting the people and culture of Silicon Valley. Ever since OpenAI’s ChatGPT debuted in November 2022, countless entrepreneurs have been inspired to make their own generative AI tools. Now, nearly every new start-up has an AI element — technology that automates simple tasks, for example, or a chatbot that provides mental health tips.
In the past year and a half, entrepreneurs from around the world have flocked to San Francisco to be part of this AI revolution. Many start-up founders and their teams live and work together so they can focus intently on building their companies. And evenings like the AI hackathon I visited in March 2023 have become Silicon Valley’s idea of fun.
Here’s a peek inside that world.
![Michaela Carmein (second from right) watches demos while helping out during the HF0 Demo Day where she entertained guests by pretending to be an AI robot named “Guinevere” during the event for the start-up fellowship in San Francisco, Calf., on Tuesday, April 4, 2023. She talked to guests in character throughout the entire event. Carmein’s close friend, Emily Liu, is one of the co-founders of HF0, and she helped her friend create a memorable event with the costume and act. Demo days at other programs can often be routine events with start-ups mostly giving slide deck presentations, but the HF0 team added creative details throughout their demo day to make the event fun for guests.](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/ZIIY62ZEB6VMCTE37DGK2XM57Y.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048 1x)
![extra // organized by Cerebral Valley. The group — which shares the nickname for the San Francisco neighborhood of Hayes Valley, where many AI start-ups are based — found that venture capital firms, many of which moved to hybrid or remote work, had office space to spare
Taylor Schmidt (second from right) and other guests of the “Cerebral Valley X Blumberg AI Builders Co-Work” event work on their laptops at the office of the venture capital firm Blumberg Capital in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, March 16, 2023. The Cerebral Valley organization has been hosting regular co-working events, often at the offices of venture capital firms, where individuals building AI can come together, work, and create community with one another. Such meet-ups are a way to help with what can often be the loneliness of start-up life where founders are usually working around the clock on their companies.](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/NTLCQQTVTTL277TUMWJLV2AD4E.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048 1x)
Evan Stites-Clayton, left, and Dave Fontenot, right, co-founders of the start-up residency Hacker Fellowship Zero, look at photos that were used to entertain guests as they checked in at an April 2023 demo event. Volunteers asked attendees to identify the differences between similar-looking photos to prove they are humans, not robots.
![EXTRA: Hackathons are big networking opportunities, with participants frequently meeting people who go on to become co-founders, teammates, friends, even romantic partners. // Jacob Cole (center) leads a Qigong session in the backyard as a break for people competing in the hackathon during the AGI House LLM Hackathon at the “AGI House,” a hacker house in Hillsborough, California on March 25, 2023. The one-day hackathon was planned around the release of GPT-4 and drew hundreds of excited attendees. Hackathons are an opportunity for individuals to build something in a set amount of time, testing and refining their skills, but they are also social events. While coding away, people make friends and build community with one another.](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/IBNW4W3S5F7XZSFIWN4YT6BZ7Y.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048 1x)
Aqeel Ali, left, works on a project with the input of Kevin Baragona at the office of Exa, an AI-powered search engine start-up, in San Francisco in September 2023. The start-up — whose members live and work together in an apartment above another start-up — invited their friends to a Saturday night coding party. The vibe resembled a club plus co-working space: Electronic music played and housemates whipped up mac and cheese as they worked into the early-morning hours.
![EXTRA: The event was meant to foster support and inclusion for women in the male-dominated industry. // Tammie Siew, a partner of the venture capital firm Pebblebed, (left) and attendees of a “Women in AI Lunch” stand together before breaking into a mingling game during the event at Pebblebed’s office in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, February 19, 2023. The event, which gathered women working in AI for an afternoon of meeting each other, discussing their projects and exchanging contacts, was co-hosted by the organization Cerebralvalley.ai and the company Speedify.ai with help from and organizing from Siew and Pebblebed.](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/7NTNULT3XRZ5XANSCWCO5TW6QM.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048 1x)
![An individual dressed as the hugging face emoji dances with attendees of the event “Open Source AI Meetup with Hugging Face CEO” during the event at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California on March 31, 2023. Almost 4,300 people RSVPed on Partiful with event organizers referring to it as “AI Woodstock” due to the massive interest in attending. Hugging Face is a company that develops tools for building applications using machine learning. AI builders were spread throughout the event giving demos of what they are working on.](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/Q4FQAZZUUVQIVNFI7JA6UYSRNY.jpg&high_res=true&w=2048 1x)
Participants work (and nap) at a 24-hour hackathon at a co-working space in the San Francisco Ferry Building in March 2023. The winners included a project to help prevent AI from being used for spam calls, a tool to help kids learn to read and a platform for therapists to improve mental health care. A year later, the AI boom is still going strong, with some weekends offering multiple hackathons for entrepreneurs to choose from.
About this story
To capture these photos, Laura Morton was invited into events hosted by the AGI House, Hacker Fellowship Zero, Cerebral Valley, Internet Activism, Decibel, Latent Space, the GAI Collective; the live-work offices of Exa and Brev. Dev; the offices of Blumberg Capital, Pebblebed and Founders Inc.; the co-working spaces Werqwise and SHACK15.
The photography for this article was supported by a grant from the Pierre and Alexandra Boulat Association.
Design and development by Michael Domine. Photo Editing by Monique Woo. Editing by Lisa Bonos and Karly Domb Sadof. Design editing by Betty Chavarria.