I Spent a Week in a Hacker House
The article discusses a week spent in a hacker house in San Francisco, where the author met tech founders Elliot Roth and William Joy, who were attempting to control lobsters with an AI bot. The duo's experiment involved implanting electrical nodes in the lobsters to direct their movements, with the goal of connecting them to the AI agent OpenClaw. The hacker house, known as Biopunk House, is a co-living space for young entrepreneurs who aim to push the boundaries of technology and human consciousness.
- ▪Elliot Roth and William Joy attempted to control lobsters with an AI bot by implanting electrical nodes in the animals.
- ▪The experiment was conducted in a hacker house in San Francisco, where the authors spent a week observing the tech founders.
- ▪The goal of the experiment was to connect the lobsters to the AI agent OpenClaw, allowing the bot to decide the lobsters' movements.
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TechnologyI Spent a Week in a Hacker HouseStaring down the AI abyss in a battered Victorian row houseBy Matteo WongThe living room of the Accler8 hacker house in San Francisco, where I stayed for a week. (Niki Williams for The Atlantic)June 30, 2026, 7:30 AM ET ShareSave On a Friday in April, I hopped into an Uber to a fish market in San Francisco with a couple of tech founders on a mission to buy lobsters. Not for dinner, but for science: The duo dreamed of one day altering human consciousness, but they would start by toying around with some crustaceans.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Atlantic.
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