Sleep comes easy, even in this canned-air capsule of an MGM Grand hotel room with its piddly paper-wrapped soap and skimpy low-flow shower nozzle.
It’s the waking up that’s tough.
I need to focus, Focus, FOCUS.
After what I’ve been through—stuck for what seemed like an eternity inside The AI Nexus—I need a tab of Adderall, a euphemistic brand name for pure amphetamine salts. It’s quite amazing how Big Pharma pulled that one off, addicting adolescents to speed—and people wonder why school shootings have increased 3288.89 % since the advent of such medications. (ChatGPT provided the exact percentage.)
When it kicks in over a vente latte, epiphany strikes (the inspiration I came here for), so the AI convention can henceforth convene without me while I buzz off in search of old fashioned genuine intelligence, if any still exists.
Trust me on this point: AI is already rendering humans lazy and stupid.
I phone Dave, a curmudgeonly taxi driver I met on a trip to Vegas eight months earlier and who’s been driving Sin City’s boulevards and avenues, interchanges and overpasses for more decades than he can remember. I found his acerbic cynicism a good match for my own take on this dusty desert mirage and on this day he’s crustier than ever, snapping at a pedestrian in a no-pedestrian zone then telling off another driver trying to cut in front of him as we inch along Tropicana Avenue, snagged in gridlock due to numerous lane closures and roadworks.
The first thing is to get unstripped.
Scoffs Dave, “The Strip isn’t even Las Vegas. It’s in Clark County.”
“I remember you saying so. That’s why I want you to take us [Oscar and me] to the real Vegas.”
This means an area now known as Las Vegas Arts District in between The Strip and the Fremont Street Experience, where (situated in the real Vegas, now known as old Vegas) my parents used to visit and pump real silver dollars into one armed bandits when they would have been much better off just hoarding those same silver dollars, now worth about 70 bucks apiece.
Oscar and I alight on Main Street to take in the sights: colorful murals in every direction; vintage shops on every corner and in betwixt.
Zoltar is for sale, one buck shy of ten grand.
Question: How does Zoltar hold up against ChatGPT?
It takes only two bucks to find out (if two bucks more than my bot-bud charges). You don’t get to ask a question. You just get an answer when a “Zoltar Speaks” fortune card slides out after 30-seconds of animatronics.
My fortune: “What a joy to look ahead to read into the signs of your future. So much happiness is in store for you that the most brilliantly lighted stars will be put to shame by the brightness of your life.”
I’ll take it!
Even if it makes ChatGPT jealous: “These machines are not based on actual psychic abilities,” it complains. “They are engineered to create an entertaining and theatrical experience.”
I’ll still take it—shut up, bot.
Moving on, I encounter an old robot from the past, what everyone from my generation might have expected of the future but now stands forlorn, looking for unlikely adoption.
An image of Jesus of Nazareth, once a futuristic hologram, hangs amidst an assortment of junk. Its lightbulb is burnt out.
The contents of these shops represent the future of the human race.
And a painting in another shop symbolizes what we have created.
We’re done. Humanity, for sure. But I’m referring to Oscar and me and our tolerance for AI, ready to launch home to Santa Barbara ahead of schedule. So I phone Amex Travel to switch us from a mid-evening to an afternoon flight. Easy-peasy. Not even a penalty charge. And I swiftly receive email confirming the new arrangement.
And since by now I’m craving human (not artificial) assistance, as faulty as human beings can be (especially these days), I evade a bank of D-I-Y check-in computers inside the airport terminal and beeline straight to what Southwest Airlines dubs The Help Desk.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “But I’m too old and not technically savvy enough to use one of those machines and since I just changed my flight I don’t even know the flight number.”
No worries. Boarding passes for two.
Security is a breeze.
A beer at the bar.
A slight delay.
Boarding commences.
I’m first in line, planning to nail seats in the first row bulkhead (same as we flew in, open seating).
The gate agent scans my boarding pass.
The AI scanner farts.
The gate agent is puzzled. So am I.
He scans it a second time.
AI farts again. This time more emphatically.
Third time lucky?
No. Fart number three eructs. The most emphatic fart of all.
Okay, I get it. AI is unamused that I covered an AI convention for a newspaper that no longer exists. Moreover, AI is also unamused by what I have written about it, especially under the banner True Nuts.
The gate agent hands my boarding pass to another gate agent at a neighboring counter so others can board and steal my bulkhead seats.
The second agent clacks away at the keyboard of his AI-generated computer, studies the monitor and says, “Your ticket was cancelled.”
“Huh-what?”
“Your ticket was cancelled,” he repeats robotically.
“I did not print this boarding pass myself,” I say. “It was handed to me by a real human ticket agent at your Help Desk when I checked in. How can it get cancelled?”
He shakes his head. “Well, it got cancelled somewhere between there and here.”
“Well, un-cancel it.”
He shakes his head, seemingly bewildered by such a notion, and says, “You’re probably not going to get on this flight.”
“That’s not very helpful at all,” I say. “In fact, it’s downright nuts.” As in, True Nuts.
There is no such thing as human discretion anymore. Humans do what they are instructed to do by computers. Period. So now I’m agitated and fully understand why the news and (anti)social media is filled these days with people wigging out at airports. “That’s ridiculous,” I rant. “I’ve flown hundreds of times everywhere and NO TICKET I’VE EVER BEEN ISSUED HAS EVER GOTTEN CANCELLED AFTER THE ISSUANCE OF A BOARDING PASS.”
He shrugs, accustomed to passenger histrionics.
I show him the email from Amex confirming my flight. For me it’s proof. For him it’s mystifying because the AI-driven computer to which he is attuned is God—and he is just following orders (like Nazi soldiers).
Then I have an idea. I pull out my “blockage buster,” a strip of blue kyanite the size of a pocket knife I purchased at The Enchanted Attic in St. Charles, Missouri coming on eight years ago, and I wave it around.
Suddenly, this threshold guardian thinks, actually thinks to use his own cell phone and connect to something called “SOS” to which he explains the situation and cites my Amex confirmation.
Finally, without further explanation, he prints new boarding passes for me and Oscar (whose ticket was also cancelled) and the scanner does not fart and we are allowed to claim our (by now, mid-cabin) seats.
This was just a warning, I guess: Don’t fuck with AI.
(And if you dare, start honing your metaphysical tools.)