Commonwealth Club: Ben Davis With Garry Tan: Can San Francisco Become the Florence of a New Renaissance?

Join us for a conversation with Ben Davis, creator of the Bay Lights and City of Awe, and founder of the San Francisco nonprofit Illuminate, and Garry Tan, president and CEO of Y Combinator. San Francisco might be the most important city in the world right now. The arc of human consciousness is being defined here. Artificial intelligence is racing forward on fear as much as ambition, which makes it inherently reckless. Davis, founder of the San Francisco nonprofit Illuminate, believes the antidote is culture. He has declared San Francisco the “City of Awe”—that rare blend of beauty and terror the moment demands. Y Combinator’s Garry Tan—whose firm has funded much of the AI wave and who has spent years personally invested in San Francisco’s own civic future—joins Davis to explore where imagination and acceleration meet, and what public art can teach an industry built on speed. San Francisco’s destiny, David argues, isn’t to inspire the world through the technology it creates, but through how we choose to live: the civilization we build around living, working and visiting here. Will this era, and what comes next, be defined by technology or by humanity? Can this next wave of wealth become an unprecedented wave of shared fruit—on our streets, in our parks, in our open and shared spaces?