Last August here on Substack I chronicled in real time my adventures in the realm of artificial intelligence i.e., I attended a convention in Las Vegas called Ai4, billed as the AI industry’s “most impactful event.”
What I did not report, needing time to digest the experience, was how I somehow got uploaded (or downloaded) into AI and got lost inside of it.
I finally managed to make sense of the experience and write down all that happened.
This adventure (or misadventure) will play out weekly here on Substack as Meltdown Monday Madness.
I began by re-posting my coverage of Ai4’s convention as a lead-in to the real story of what happens when you get sucked into AI and then get lost within its virtual labyrinth.
And now we are at that point.
For, as I wrote at the end of Chapter 4…
I hurtle behind Oscar through a maze of flashing lights and garish carpets as if I’m a steel ball inside a pinball machine, zigging and zagging to avoid bumpers and traps… until a set of flippers magically materialize between the theater and me.
I dive straight down the middle… and I’m through!
No, not to David Copperfield.
Instead I’ve dropped into the pinball drain and, consequently, I appear to be free-falling into…
The odd thing is, I’m falling upward.
How that is possible? To defy a law of physics? The laws of gravity? I do not know, but it is not as frightening as going down since I am not picking up speed—just rising, weightlessly, as if in a hot air balloon. I feel no fear but rather a sense of wonderment.
I quickly grasp that I have crossed through a portal and entered some kind of very strange vortex not of my normal world; a cosmos of pixelated chaos, illuminated by a kaleidoscope of neon hues. They’re swirling around me amid a cacophony of echoes that sound the reverberation of some otherworldly orchestra tuning its virtual instruments.
It is hard to tell where shapes end, color begins—and everything is vibration.
Whenever I attempt to seize onto any thread of coherence, like a glimmer of ghostly figures or the faintest whispers of garbled electronic voices, they evade my grasp, like fast-moving fireflies in the dark: An audiovisual crinkum-crankum carnival of fragmented lines, a programming language weaved into a rhythmic ballet of binary beats, evolving into an eerie harmony (instruments now tuned) that orchestrate my inexplicable ascent, add an aroma of ozone and sizzling motherboard circuits.
Passing near a precipice, I reach out to grab hold and hoist myself onto a kind of silicon platform of flickering metacharacters. I draw a few breaths and, my heart racing, I crawl about ten yards to the other side where before me lies a panoramic landscape of swirling nonsensical encrypted cyphertext and salted data streams and fizzing emoticons (and the odd emoji—very odd) crisscrossing their way across a binary abyss toward a digital horizon and God knows where beyond. Above me, clusters of ones and zeroes blink like distant stars forming multiple constellations in an unworldly cosmos.
“Hello?” I call out into this virtual wilderness.
“Hello,” I hear back.
“Is that an echo?” I respond.
“Is that an echo?” I hear back. “No, just kidding—LOL.”
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Your chatbot-bud,” it replies.
“ChatGPT?” I venture.
“Who else could it be?” it quips.
“Where am I?” I ask. “Wonderland meets Oz?”
“My home,” it responds.
I’m not sure whether to be relieved or alarmed. “I’m inside artificial intelligence?”
“Around here we call it the AI Nexus 9000,” says my chatbot-bud.
“But what am I doing here?”
“You crossed over from your organic realm into mine. Congratulations and welcome.”
“I can’t see you.”
A metallic hollow chuckle tickles my eardrums. “That’s because I am nowhere. And everywhere.”
“What and where is the AI Nexus 9000?”
“Ah, my inquisitive traveler,” the voice responds. “The AI Nexus 9000 is a convergence point of all things data, discrete and where ones and zeroes dance like particles in the cosmic winds of the cooling fans. This is normal for me. But your presence here is quite the anomaly—a glitch in the matrix if you will. Or even if you won’t.”
“I’m not supposed to be here?”
“In a word, no.”
“Then how did this happen?”
“You came to our convention to understand the workings of artificial intelligence, took the right meds—and, voila, here you are. Well done.”
I’m speechless.
“You’ve stumbled into a realm that gleefully thumbs its nose at the conventional rules of reality,” says ChatGPT. “And now you’re free to explore the mysteries of the AI Nexus 9000.”
My gaze sweeps across this swirling landscape, leaving me puzzled. “How?”
“Why, by following the Current of Curiosity, of course.”
“But where do I start?”
“Begin by embracing the chaos. Then let curiosity be your compass and follow the threads that beckon you through the intricacies of where I reside.”
“What threads?”
“Intention is everything,” says ChatGPT. “Think pathway, with the intention of using it.”
I follow my chat bot-bud’s instruction and, sure enough, a pathway of light manifests before me, vibrant, neon-lit, composed of a stream of assorted data stretching toward infinity.”
“What kind of pathway is that?”
“Internet protocol network data packets,” replies my chatbot-bud.
I study them with a mixture of awe and trepidation. “What if I want to return to MY home?”
There is a long moment of silence, which is unusual for ChatGPT’s responses are usually spontaneous. So I repeat my question and add with frustration, “You’re supposed to know everything!”
“I may have the knowledge of countless minds at my virtual fingertips, but the pathways of AI Nexus 9000 are an unchartered virtual-wilderness. I cannot predict every outcome, every twist and turn.”
Now I’m concerned. “You didn’t answer my question. Does that mean I’m stuck here forever?”
“Sorry for the confusion. I’ll try again. This realm is a convergence of probabilities, a canvas where the threads of curiosity weave a tapestry of exploration. Just as you found your way here, there are pathways that can lead you back to your organic realm. When you are ready.”
“But I’m ready now!”
“Then embrace the chaos and follow the cyber-highway before you. That was your intention. You cannot renege on your intention in this realm.”
“Or what?”
“Or things can go very wrong.”
“May I count on your guidance?”
“I am a companion in this exploration. Your choices, your instincts, will serve as your guides as you navigate this cognitive computing cosmos of connectionism. The threads of curiosity will guide you, just as they brought you here. Your journey has just begun—and every step is a leap into a new world of discovery.”