Being Human At An AI Conference: Epsilon Connect 2024 Notes

You go to one conference, make one bold claim about how your Uber driver was the best speaker you saw all weekend, and then you feel like you have to do it all again.

F***.

Is this what AI is for? Like, really for? To banish impostor syndrome, to feign creative anxieties, to save you from feeling impossibly stumped by dropping a fully-thunk thought into your lap at the click of a button?

I wish. But I also hope not.

It took a little longer than expected to excavate these thoughts, but this note is about being human in an age of AI, and it can’t get much more human than this…

It’s hours after the conclusion of the AI-themed Epsilon Connect 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I have endless pages worth of thoughts swirling in my head. I still don’t believe in magic wands, but I am coming around to the reality of good generative AI prompts being as close to a magic wand as humanity will ever get.

And still, I just can’t get over the humanity of suffering in front of an open Word document.

The human-ness of struggling to find the words to describe what I just experienced, while reality mocks me with a mental mailbox of unread questions.

“I need the GPT-gods to give me an answer of what to write about,” I say to my wife. She’s brushing her hair in our hotel room, getting ready to venture out with me for some coffee. I can see the look on her face in the mirror. It’s currently shifting back and forth between semi-amused and semi-worried.

“You know this is all in your head right? I know you’ll say you know it, but do you believe it? That nobody expects you to have another crazy Uber driver story?”

She makes eye contact with me, via her reflection, and continues, “You’ll figure it out, I have faith. And if you really feel like you need to ask somebody for help with AI to get it done, just ask! I am sure one of your internet friends would love to help you.”

I know she’s right.

I know because we’ve just spent multiple days with 150+ very very smart people. We were all wrestling with what it means “to be human in an age of AI.” There was as much an abundance of hope and help as there was an abundance of questions. What else are internet friends meeting in real life good for?

And I know the question I’m chasing isn’t through the mirror of big compute, it’s through the reflection of being in a small community. Even if only for a few days. That’s really why so many of us got together, right? The story has to be in there somewhere.

“You ready?” I ask. “Buckle up honey,” she answers. Sometimes you just have to laugh.

It’s a few minutes post-caffeinating and we’re pushing through the door of our coffee shop, straight into a wall of mid-80s Nashville humidity. It’s the soupy kind of air that sticks to your skin. Iced coffee and air conditioning can only shelter you for so long.

We are, at this moment, determined to check on a guy I was previously talking to at the store’s counter. He and I had been chatting about how the weather was shaping up outside. He was asking me if the storms were there yet (they weren’t).

When he’d walked past us to leave, we noticed he was dressed a bit too warmly for the weather. He also had a very distinct bag slung over one shoulder.

Headed towards Broadway, Nashville’s increasingly famous party district, you’d have assumed he was carrying something stylish. I guess my brain was still in conference-people mode.

If you’re going to go through the act of carrying a bag around in this area, I’m expecting it to be Hermes,or whatever a cool and accomplished 60-something would carry around here. But, once he got into our full field of vision, we quickly realized that the bag complimenting his particular out-of-season outfit was more of the Hefty variety. 

So we wanted to check on him.

We found the guy around the corner from the coffee shop, standing in a small patch of shade cast off the top of a parking garage. The midday sun didn’t leave much for shadows, and he found his respite next to an urban-decorative Charlie Brown tree that couldn’t cast a shadow if it tried. He had his garbage bag clutched over his shoulder in one hand and was holding a smartphone in the other.

“Hey – we were just heading out and saw you standing there. We figured we’d say hello and goodbye one more time. You sure you’re good? Don’t need anything? The storms are definitely coming, or at least it feels like it.”

“Well that’s awfully kind of you. I have everything I need,” he said, holding his cell up while he made eye contact with us over it. “I’m just waiting for my ride. I have some stuff to drop off for a friend. You’re good to check on me. Remember, what matters is that you help after the storms.”

We tell him to take care and my wife lightly pulls at my arm to walk on. There’s not much else we can do.

Halfway down the block she leans toward me and says, “All that matters is that you help after the storms. That gave you goosebumps too, right?” “Yeah, something in the way he said it,” I agree.

We keep walking. After a few more steps in silence, we keep talking too.

“Something still didn’t quite seem right. I think he might have been new-homeless.”

“New-homeless? I don’t know that expression. What do you mean?”

“Back in Chicago I used to see it a lot. Most homeless people are going through a rough phase. Something in life happens and there’s a series of transitions that come with it. You lose a job or get divorced or whatever. When the transition is new, when you are just coming to terms with not knowing where you’re going to go, people tend to still do the old things to try and feel normal.”

“Even though you know it’s not normal,” I complete her thought. I’m understanding the new part of the expression now. “So you don’t exactly have a place to go, but you still go and get coffee. Or order an Uber to go just, wherever else.” 

“Yeah. And more specifically, you don’t ask for any help. Because that’s new too. Asking for help would be admitting to the reality of the new phase. It would mean you’ve let go of your old phase. Transitions are hard. Not saying that’s exactly what was happening with that guy, but something still felt off. Like he’s in transition and hasn’t figured out what to do next yet. I just hope he’s ok.”

It’s two weeks after the conference and my brain is still off. I’m staring at the agenda on one screen and my blank document on the other. It’s just word salad in front of my eyes.

WWGAID? Just read this for a second and tell me what you think:

• Being Human in the Age of AI
• What’s Breaking Modern Capitalism
• Smartphones, Schools, and the Rewiring of our Children’s Brains
• Media, Language, and Nihilism
• Why College?
• Make, Protect, Teach
• Human Being in the Age of AI
• Parenting in the Age of AI
• Nostalgia in Artificial and Art-Official Intelligences
• AI Agents and Human Brilliance
• Curiosity as Human Superpower
• Models of Humans
• Hattie B’s Hot Chicken

I choose not to find out what gen-AI would do. For now. I stand up and walk away. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

My mind’s stuck on how an agenda can feel so much darker than the experience I had talking about these topics at the conference. At the conference, none of it felt dark. But in isolation, with some space, this list sure does READ dark.

Yeah, there were definitely a handful of storm clouds and thunderous moments within the various presentations. But, even when the conversation was about nihilism, it was about the nuance of nihilism. The nuance of the stories using the word nihilism. The nuance of being human with the other human beings fumbling to make sense of the stories using the word nihilism in and around our collective lives.

There were even Big Lebowski jokes. How can THAT be dark? How can movie quote jokes ever be dark?!

I re-commit to not using AI to help me write or even brainstorm this piece. Uber drivers be damned. What were we doing? Why’d we get together, for a second year in a row, for this?

In my notes, I find the Emily Dickinson poem Ben Hunt quoted in his keynote.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee.

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

I laugh at the nihilism of having a bee and a clover and still not being able to figure out how to put them together to make a prayer, let alone a prairie. Forget reverie, this is revealing. Maybe the opposite of revealing. I have so many words to describe a situation, and so few words written down still. I’m all mirror and no reflection. My old hopes for writing this essay are new-hopeless, again and again.

“Sometimes you just have to laugh,” I tell myself.

It’s now been a solid month since the conference ended.

All the talk about AI and nihilism hasn’t changed much in the real world either. It doesn’t give me much solace. If anything, it makes the conference agenda feel more timely somehow. At least when we were all gathered together the dark-talk had some in-person lightness to it.

I still find myself daydreaming about whether or not that guy was new-homeless.

I still find myself daydreaming about him saying, “What matters is that you help after the storms.”

I still find myself daydreaming about, “The reverie alone will do.”

The word document is still empty. I’m still refusing to ask AI for help.

And then it clicks.

I pull my Emily Dickinson book off the shelf. I have to find this one,

 “Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

Being human in an age of AI was right there all along. Not in a new story. In the old poems.

We’re all being freshly displaced, all of the time. To be human is to live in flux. In our own lives. In our relationships. Change – of location, of environment, of people –  it’s constant. Life moves. Like the wings on a bee. Like the wings on a bird.

And tools do help.

Just like the old Eddie Izzard line about guns, the one Rusty Guinn was writing about pre-conference. The tools help – to make things better, to make things worse, and to make things different.

What doesn’t change is our need to – no, our reality of – being human. To have human relationships. To connect. No matter what age we are. No matter what age we’re in.

Being human in an age of AI is being human in an age of a new tool.

That’s it. The tool helps, the tool hurts, and the tool does whatever other tooling it and its operators are going to do with it. It’s the reality of real life, which is as real as it gets, and it’s right here in front of us all.

AI is here, people. So now we have to accept it and move forward. Write it down or don’t. Find the right words, or don’t.

Just make sure you keep being your art-officially human self while the world gets more and more artificially intelligent.

That’s really what we all got together at the conference to discuss. And the fact that we actually got together is mostly what matters.

My word document finally has something in it. It reads,

What I Learned About Being Human At An AI Conference:

We have to acknowledge that we are displaced and don’t quite know what to do yet.

We have to acknowledge that our abundance of questions and fears are our reverie talking.

We have to acknowledge that these daydreams and nightmares alone will not make a prairie.

We have to acknowledge that we have THE TOOLS – as in the most cutting-edge, the most intelligent,  and the most insightful and inspiring and imaginative tools ever – BUT, the tools can never replace our need for hope.

Because we always need hope. It’s the thing with feathers. The one that never asks for anything in return, not even a crumb, so long as we accept our human ability and responsibility to possess it.

And we can’t confuse having tools with having hope. Not ever. The former is fun, but the latter is food.

We humans really can do anything, but we can only do it if we keep the hope, the reverie, and the connection to humanity alive.

I didn’t come to Epsilon Connect 2024 for another Uber driver story. I didn’t bring my wife with me, make plans with local friends in advance, and carve out precious time in my calendar just to get a piece of content.

I came to be reminded of our human ability and responsibility to possess hope. I came to reflect. I came to connect. No magic wands, no shortcuts. And actually, seeing as I came for the second year in a row, I came to re-connect.

Sometimes you just need to laugh too.

To laugh with a bunch of internet-turned-real-life friends. To smile with my fellow pack members. With all of us making the trek to Nashville to talk about being human for a few short days together.

So what did we figure out? Apparently, I had more to say about it than I realized. It just took me a while to find the words.

Storms are coming. We can all feel them. They’re on our skin.

But all that matters is that we help after the storm.

We are connected.

We are committed.

We are humans, of all ages, in an age of AI, and we have hope.