The smooth 40-minute flight from SBA to Vegas is fraught with nothing and sure beats a five-and-a-half slog on wheels through the stagnation and apathy of Lancaster, Palmdale and Barstow as much as these meth-amphetamine hubs would have set a surreal tone for the city that never sleeps, where dreams are born, destinies rewritten and senses are overwhelmed (especially good sense); a land of decadence and desperation.
MGM Grand is not to be mistaken for grandeur but grand only in the sense of sheer expanse and cavernous interior (add prole—the snob in me—compared to Bellagio and Wynn), furnished with high-tech money-grabbing machinery in every direction accompanied by flashing lights and garish carpets created by psychologists to liberate speculators from their spondulicks.
Why a convention here and not Caesars Palace?
The answer is this: AI does not need a home; its domain is everywhere. And it never sleeps. (So to hell with AI’s human facilitators, they can slum it.)
I wish I’d brought a baguette to scatter breadcrumbs for finding the way from my soulless (sparse, basic) room back to the maze downstairs and eventually a return for sleep.
And perhaps that is the first tip-off regarding what AI is truly about: soulless.
My fellow AI sleuth Oscar and I take refuge at International Smoke, a barbecue joint along the Grand’s restaurant row, a glass of chard and half-a Xanax to settle my frazzled nerves from stimuli overload.
Around us are the wizards of AI, recognizable by large, impressive entry passes hanging around their necks. (We arrived too late to claim ours, save registration for the morn….)
Since I’m only human and not as fast as AI, it’ll take a few days for me to process what I’ve learned and write about this convention so I’m looking at Sunday to begin reporting. Meantime, You’ll find the usual memoir (Thursday) and novelette (Saturday) in between.
But here is a sneak preview: The CIA is present at Ai4.
I snapped this pic before the pair of recruiters noticed my Press credentials and snapped back at me, “No faces!”
And since I respect the national security of my country, I’ve obliged by lopping off their heads.
I suspect the real reason for their presence is to make it easy for spies from China to make contact and change sides.
Meantime, one suspects Special Agents from the FBI’s counterintelligence division are circulating undercover to monitor Chinese spies monitoring whatever they’re hoping to steal, in addition to attempting recruitments of their own.