The year in AI was crazy. So was this meeting of AI’s brightest minds.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. SAN DIEGO—At a party atop a waterfront hotel, researchers kicked back with cocktails like the Burning TPU, made of honey, bourbon and Sardinian myrtle liqueur, and named after Google’s custom AI chip. They made small talk about everything from the hours at Elon Musk’s xAI (long) to the likelihood that foreign spies were inside top AI labs (high).

And one venture capitalist described in exhaustive detail the circular flow of money behind a recent investment by Nvidia into his AI startup, enrapturing the crowd with his explanation of how capitalism really works. For years, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems—everyone just calls it NeurIPS—was attended by only the most dedicated scientists on the frontier of artificial intelligence. But what was once a small and proudly dorky academic gathering has become something more like AI-palooza.

This year’s conference was attended by more than 24,000 people, who invaded San Diego earlier this month and made it the epicenter of the tech world. After spending much of the year racing to remake civilization, they packed a giant convention center and marveled at displays flaunting the latest AI research between bites of Auntie Anne’s pretzels. At night, they filled restaurants, bars and taco joints with gossip about the industry that promises to transform the global economy.

The weeklong extravaganza was a sign of just how much this previously obscure and neglected corner of tech has changed since the start of the AI boom. Attendees who once gushed about ChatGPT whispered about OpenAI’s declaration of a “code red" as rival labs threaten its dominance. University researchers complained about how thoroughly the corporate world has