AI4: The Conference Inside the Mirage

160F was the temperature on the tarmac at Scottsdale Airport when I found out my jet to Las Vegas was delayed. That's hot enough that nobody should live in either city, but Vegas is, by far, the more outrageous situation. A vast asphalt and concrete monument to man's hubris and cockroachlike ability to plant his flag anywhere.

Nothing is real

I need to get out and walk to orient myself wherever I go. "Out" is a bit of a misnomer in Vegas. You can walk for miles and miles without ever coming to an exit. In a sense, there is no way out of the illusion, at least by foot.

The strip brutally imposes on you with its false proportions and stucco homage to great empires and American myths. The conference was at the Venetian.

There is a fake sky and a fake river. The gondolas are real.

Time itself ceases when there are no windows to the outside world, just a painted cloud-dotted sky stuck perpetually at the same time 24/7. Hunter S. Thompson took drugs in Las Vegas, but it's unnecessary. Las Vegas is drugs.

I was on a sick and terrifying trip, chock full of fear and loathing, unsure where I was headed until the hallucinations wore off.

I was there to cover a conference

AI4 graciously invited me as media personnel to the conference. A man, with likely paranoid delusions about building an independent media company, among proper media outlets with followings hundreds of times larger than mine. DrJ, a vile interloper among real professionals and showmen. I found myself in a no man's land, some kind of Burroughsian Interzone where the clips were coming through choppy on the radio but not making any sense outside of an arcane free association happening outside of myself.

AI4 was another illusion. The whole place was illusions all the way down, stacked up on top of each other like some cybernetic orgy.

The showroom floor was buzzing with Clavicular clones manning booths hopped up on nicotine, doused in rich cologne, shirts tastefully unbuttoned, trying to find The Sale.

Meanwhile, the freaks, extremists, and weirdos, my people, the only people worth having a real discussion with, were kept far away from genpop three floors above to discuss their "theories" and "manifestos" and "mathematics" of what was happening in AI and what was to come. Few people attended these sessions. The masses congregated at the show floor and the keynote speeches.

The symbolism wouldn't have been more obvious if it were printed on our registration badges. I am like a starving bloodhound with a nose for power and almost no constitution to wield it. This is the whole thesis of my channel: to understand how power works in tech. My nose inevitably led me over and over again to the 5th floor where the real power was, available to all those curious enough to seek it but wrapped in mystery and gated by intelligence. All of this was happening above the "AI" fit for mass consumption being sold for $20-per-month subscriptions three levels below.

Which one was real

Both. Each in their own way.

The show floor's AI is real in the sense that it drives the market. Real money was exchanged for products. I saw deals being loudly closed over $200 steak dinners and hypermasculine mixed drinks by barrel-chested men, most certainly not software engineers or academics.

20% of the companies on the show floor were "real AI companies." Products that were created from the ground up with AI in mind. 80% were existing products that glommed on an ill-conceived and poorly functioning AI "assistant" to their existing application and called it "AI native." The product was fake but the money was real, you could spend it.

The academic track was the kind of real I'm more interested in, the type that changes the fabric of reality before the MBA bozos can figure out a way to drunkenly fingerfuck advertisements into it.

I had the opportunity to interview one of the sharpest thinkers from the academic track, NIST adversarial AI lead Apostol Vasilev. It is paradoxically the most visionary interview I have ever conducted but will likely be my least-viewed video on YouTube. Apostol literally details how rogue adversarial AI can be managed in the future. His understanding completely refutes existing paradigms of cybersecurity and will define our path forward. It is quite literally insider information that will determine the direction of the tech markets, but the masses will not watch it because it will require the viewer to be willing to stretch their understanding of matters as they stand today.

As I mentioned above, real power in tech is available to anyone curious enough to seek it but wrapped in mystery and gated by intelligence. If you're feeling brave, you can watch it here: Apostol's interview

Define AI

AI is fast becoming the most meaningless technological concept because it can mean anything at this point.

Acme Boots Company now has an AI assistant = AI company. Research on adversarial uses of LLMs = AI.

More to come on this in next week's edition. The dust is still settling. Stay tuned to the YouTube channel over the next few weeks. I have interviews coming out soon with the first human Neuralink recipient and with the cofounder of Oculus VR. We talk China, hardware, and Christianity.

This newsletter is not for everyone. You're probably more than a bit strange if you read it. If you know anyone else strange like we are, please pass this along so they can subscribe. It's become clear to me that this is my top priority in the domain of "content creation." I'll keep making videos for now, but they can't be as real or as deep as this newsletter goes just by virtue of the medium. This is the sharpest cut of my ideas you can get. Thank you for reading.

• Doc