On a Monday night last November, a few hours after OpenAI held an event for developers in downtown San Francisco, hundreds of artificial intelligence aficionados packed into a three-storey nightclub several blocks away to celebrate a looser, less corporate vision of the AI future.

Under colourful lights and screens showing anime images, the mostly young, mostly male crowd danced to a DJ set by the musician Grimes, who is better known in tech circles as Elon Musk’s ex. A big banner on the wall read “Accelerate or Die”. Another sign showed a diagram of an AI neural network emblazoned with the motto “Come and Take It”. An AI start-up handed out promotional flyers that read, “THE MESSENGER TO THE GODS IS AVAILABLE TO YOU.”