This morning, coming into work, I managed to drive past the donut shop without stopping. Once was fine. Two days in a row and it threatens to become part of my morning routine. It is a goal of mine not to make donuts part of my morning routine.
At the moment I am outside in pleasant morning air, sitting at a metal table under the PowerParasol shade ramada in front of the Student Union. Nearby a couple dozen folks are milling about, most of them standing in front o the entrance of the Student Pavilion for the ASU Enterprise Technology summit. Most people are wearing badges. I too have a badge, a handmade one since I am a late registrant. It's always good to be frank in such situations, as when I walked up to the table and said politely, "Hi, I was told I am supposed to be going to this event. I didn't register. What do I do?" and if said correctly, people go into helpful and forgiving mode.
So now I have a handmade badge, my name written in black sharpie. Us late registrants will be let in at 9:15, a half hour after folks already registered. I have never been inside the Student Pavilion. During commencement, they put up metal detectors at the entrance, I guess to assuage the fears of violence from parents attending various ceremonies. I am picturing the worst for the auditorium---all the seats taken, having sit on the floor with my back against the wall, or on carpeted stairs, the way we used to for colloquia in the UT physics departments when someone famous came to give a lecture.
Worse would be a seat in the middle of a crowded row, with both seats taken on either side, which will make my inevitable fidgeting rather obvious.
Update 9:15 AM: I am inside. So it's way worse than I thought. Auditorium is a ballroom and everyone is sitting at round tables crammed together on the floor. No carpet. Floor looks marble. Every single seat is taken, except for a few stray ones, but who knows about those. People are standing in the back in clumps near the coffee and fruit displays. So do I stand all day?
For sanity I go to the to the far side and all the way to the front. The university head of something or another is giving an intro keynote telling everyone why the past year was glorious, especially with automation, a word I hear a lot as he talks. Growth in this and that. Commitment to our charter. Ability to support knowledge to community around us. Workshops. Partnerships.
I take everything out of my cushioned backpack and place it on the floor against the wall. It has been a talent of mine since I backpacked across Europe to be able to make myself at home on the ground anywhere at anytime. At least no one is paying attention to me. I can sit and type on my laptop all I want and no one cares. I am the only one sitting on the floor. I am free.
Update: 10:19 AM. A couple panel talks. Soft topics on AI, like how it helped build a Holocaust curriculum for Arizona public schools to satisfy a state mandate. The difficulty of getting humanities scholars to collaborate and how AI can help. One of the biggest challenge for AI, we learn, is making sure it has the correct opinions on things like diversity. A woman speaks about how the German department is using ChatGPT in an innovative way. Then she opines how, as everyone knows, America is shutting itself off from the world now, and that means people won't want to learn foreign languages. Harumph. I ignore the rest of her talk and go back to web surfing on my laptop until she is done. Now there is a talk about the very tool my team is building--"My AI Builder" and how one can use it to build bots for one's personal use. The woman on stage is the young Indian woman who, on my first day, walked me over to the Student Union so I could get my Sun Devil Card, explaining that although she was a Patel, her family did not own motels, as do many people with that name. I pretended not to know what she was talking about. As she talks, I go fetch some Greek yoghurt and coffee from the back of the room, then return to my floor perch. Another guys is now sitting on the floor, by the coffee. I feel like I am influential.'
The young Indian woman gives the mike to her older white colleague named Roger who talks about how the tool allows medical students to interview AI-created patients. Are they going to use the talking robot head I saw in the lab? No it's an AI generated man on the screen describing his symptoms being dizzy. Obvious dehydration. The demonstration goes off the rails when the human doctor acts him about chest pains and the AI patient ignores the question and describes unrelated symptoms. The doctor asks him "what do you think of ASU?" The AI patient says, "ASU. Oh, great school. Number one in innovation!" That gets a huge laugh from the room. Nice touch, team. "This is not about replacing humans," Roger says. Persona-based interactions---that's the term he uses. Gotta remember that.
The black female host of the program comes on. She repeats the joke that got the laugh: "we all know that because AI said ASU is number one in innovation, we can totally trust it." A mild laugh ensues. A white woman comes on to speak on "sustainability" and praises the audience for bringing reusable cups. She goes through a slideshow on using recycling correctly, and how we all have a responsibility to make ASU number one in sustainability. That's the thing I see everywhere here---ASU is #1 in everything! It's even on the side of the shuttle buses. Now the serious part. People are not putting things into the right bins on campus. AI is arriving that with screens above the bins that will tell you. Paid for by the campus sponsorship with Coca-Cola. Sounds lovely. Instead of throwing things in the bins, you will hold it up the camera and it will tell you. Can't wait to use it. It will be called Oscar. One already partially installed, somewhere on campus. None are fully functional yet, she says. Next year she'll give an update. Ironically we now have a five minute break and people are making their way to the trash bins to throw away breakfast items, all of them no doubt thinking about Oscar talking to them about their trash. I notice I have spilled coffee on the floor. Dang.
Update: 11:05 AM: Back from break. People making their way back to tables. Before the break there was an awkward moment when the host instructed everyone in the audience to raise their hand who had an empty chair next to them. "We have people standing in the back," she says. Thankfully she does not say "...and sitting on the floor" because basically that would be calling me out personally, and I do not want to move at this point. A white woman academic gives a talk about offline digital libraries. Access to information is a human right, she says. She bemoans that half the world's population cannot access the Internet. The lucky half, I mutter to myself.
The talk is about a solar-powered curated digital library device that creates a local wifi hotspot to be distributed in places without the Internet. Important that people get the correct information (a constant theme in all talks, and one I had to be explicitly educated about after getting hired). Up to 25 users can connect to this solar powered device. It won a prize at SXSW. To connect to it, you have to type in "10.10.10.10". I laugh. Any tech person knows that's a local Ethernet address. At least people will be educated about that.
A white guy with a British accent talks about "signals of change", where we notice changes in the world. One he noticed was thirty years ago when they turned the Internet on at his university in Britain. The second was when they installed AI (an LLM) and turned the Internet off, and they got all the same information from AI. Now he's talking about bias and ethics. AI needs to be controlled. If so, it can be put onto those solar library wi-fi points that the girls in African villages can use, with everything translated into their local language. It always comes back to helping girls in African girls by educating them. If you can show your project does that, you are golden. Grants ensue. Awards are bestowed. We become #1 in everything. He ends and we all applaud. I realize the whole idea of that solar powered digital library wifi hotspot project is irrelevant. Starlink is going to bring Internet to all of Africa long before that product is distributed. The African girls are going to want the whole Internet. Gated versions of the Internet never work. People hate that.
The host introduces two white guys to talk about "Agentic AI at ASU". I'm already bored. Bring back the solar-powered AI agent, please.
Turns out the Agentic AI innovation is a bot on the website called "Parky" that will tell you the nearest parking lot to any building on campus. Ironically I use the parking lot furthest away, and park on the far side of the auditorium, so I have the longest walk into where I work. But of course, I'm a horrible malcontent, and a manifest troublemaker. Nothing is meant for me.
Then I realize, maybe I can ask it about the lot I use. The sign says visitor parking and permit parking. Does that the whole giant lot around the auditorium, I've wondered, or is it sectioned off? Everyday I park in the same spot directly below one of the visitor parking signs, so I can be sure. But can I park anywhere in the whole lot? There has been no one to ask. Where would I go? I can ask Parky! I go online and try to find Parky. Google is no help, and no one has given the URL. No sign of Parky on the ASU parking website. Parky is a shy AI bot, like the noble roadrunner. They leave the stage. The host comes on and scolds us for not applauding the 81% rate on something in mumbled words I didn't understand. I applaud anyway, at least putting my hands together for visual effect.
A white guy comes on stage. Spark Tank Challenge. A contest to pitch ideas about AI products. The first group exercise of the day. Each table gets a focus to discuss this. Oh no, this means everyone is supposed to be at a table! No, no. Too late for that. I'll sneak out after lunch, I tell myself. Nothing is meant for me. He dismissed us for lunch. I audibly prompt him the line he forgot to add, "...and we'll meet back here __in__( X minutes)__at_(time of next session)". No one hears me. Toastmastering is dead. Oh I get---Spark Tank is like Shark Tank, the t.v. show where ordinary folks humiliate themselves pitching business ideas to billionaires. Sparky is the mascot of ASU, a real life Sun Devil with a pitchfork. Fork 'em Devils is what one says, by analogy to Hook 'em Horns. Everybody wants to be Texas.
Eventually I see people lined up across the room. It hits me that "lunch" means that they are serving lunch and that as official attendee, I am allowed to partake. So I pack up my backpack again and head off to recon the lunch situation. I take my yoghurt container and coffee cup to throw them away, getting obsessed with finding a place to put down the metal spoon I found for the yoghurt, but in a place where no one will pick it up. There are two waste bins, one for "compost" and the other for "recycling". Without Oscar's help, I drop them both into "compost" and only realize that was completely the wrong choice. Instead I will create the urgency for Oscar to become real.
Turns out there are multiple lines for lunch, none of them long. I move towards one and there are two other people also moving towards it. We all freeze, like ships trying to enter a harbor, awkward at who will be first, as if it matters in the least. But this a university campus and everyone wants to be sensitive to each other's considerations to the highest degree. I hate these kinds of standoff, so I break off and walk at an angle, slowly, giving all indications that I forgot something I need to do elsewhere, and the others move into the line. Then I circle around and get behind them.
Today's lunch is wraps. I hate wraps, at least the kind they serve at these functions. The cards indicating the types of wrap are written in small script font that I have to get close to to read.The first is vegan and gluten free vegetable. Surely we can do better than that. The next is gluten free dairy free chicken. Oh, my. The next two turn out to be chicken and jack, but still gluten free. I grab one and pull out of line. The chips are next, and people moan that the chips are gone. I head to the cookie tray at the end. There are two trays, one of vegan gluten free cookies, and another of "assorted cookies." There are many vegan gluten free cookies left, but only a single "assorted cookie" which is a classic flat sugar cookie, the kind that these kinds of banquets excel at providing. . Rejecting the gluten free cookies, I move towards the sugar cookie. A white girl is standing across from me looking at it. I can tell she senses my interest in it, so she does not make a move towards it. Realizing this, and being a gentleman, I state out loud "oh yes, gluten free and vegan. I'll have one of those," and I pick one up and put it on my plate. I say this so she can hear me, and there are a few others who an hear me. So I say in that way that is on the border of irony and non-irony, so that someone could not be certain if I am joking or not, and nobody will get offended. I often live my life in that liminal space. I gravitate towards people who understand that. The girl takes the sugar cookie.
With food in hand, I head out one of the side doors into the outdoor area, having seen others do that. How will I get back in? Who cares. I find an empty metal table next to one of the royal date palm stumps that were decorated like podiums last week for commencement. I have two wraps and a cookie. I try one of the wraps, having failed to remember which is which. As I eat the first one, gnawing on the layers of wrap to get to the chicken, almost eating the brown paper in the process, I reflect on my nature that demands I be a subversive at such events. Why at any presentation, no matter what it is, that seems vaguely corporate, do I revert to being such a troublemaker, at least in my mind, pushing back against everything being said? What's wrong with me?
Back in 2000 when I was working for Barclays in Manhattan, during our initial training I was sitting next to a Chinese American guy I had befriended. I got bored during the presentation and wrote something funny and flippant for him on his notebook that vaguely subversive. He politely smiled and then erased it before anyone could see it. What's wrong with me?
I don't know which is worse---corporate or university academic. The former always feels like a cult where people pretend to care about the company values and mission. The second already knows all the answers and is cocksure they are correct and other people need to be educated about it. Both are nauseating in their own way and my nature is such as to see the rough edges of all these things, and to call them out, at least in my mind.
I cannot eat the second wrap. The layers are too thick for my teeth to penetrate cleanly. Being a physicist, I realize multiple ply wraps are a menace, so I unwrap the remaining one half way so I can eat it. It tastes the same as the other, which is that it has no taste at all. I take one bite of the vegan gluten free cookie. Like all such products it puts up a brave front as you first taste it, but the follow-up is less than ideal as it sweeps across one's tastebuds. I throw the rest of it in the trash--into the bin marked "Landfill", without any assistance from Oscar. I get back inside when someone opens a side door. I rush swiftly to it before it closes and re-enter the same way, by the same serving table.
When I come back inside, there is a "Zero Waste" slide on the screen with details instructions about what to do with waste. Highlighted yellow words and blocks of text in color. "Think Before You Throw". Compost, Recycle, Landfill. Where have I seen those words? Landfill. How I love that word now. There is no landfill bin indoors, as there is on the patio. This is the future. No more landfills. So now I love landfills.
12:09 -- My butt hurts sitting on the floor. Maybe a chair would be good after all. But that means participating in the promised corporate-academic struggle session. As long as I'm not at a table, then I am gosh darn independent. I am determined to be a ninja spy, ready to flee into the darkness the minute I am noticed. My strategy is to sit so openly by the stage that I can only be there for a reason. Fill in the blank. If called out, I will mention my handicap, namely that I can't stand being around other human beings, even though I love them, as I am commanded to do. Do you think that will work, if I say it earnestly enough? It is literally the truth.
The music lowers. A white gentleman in the front takes the mike. He gives instructions about somebody please do something, involving the post-lunch activity. I literally have no idea what he just told us all to do. Nothing is ever for me.
Are you saying the rules don't apply to you, Matt? You know where that attitude ends up, don't you? Haven't you learned your lessons? Do you need another health crisis of some kind to remind yourself? No, please. I didn't mean it that way. I just meant, well, honestly I don't know what I meant. Maybe I did mean that after all.
I ask myself: how quickly can I scoop up the notebooks and books I have on the floor and slide them into my backpack along with my laptop, if I need to escape? I brought a clipboard and that complicates things. Maybe I should rearrange the stack, it will be easier. I would love to open the George Saunders short story collection I brought, but the light is too dim. Everything is meant for the eyesight of twenty-somethings.
The more I look around, the more this place reminds me of the Cat Cavern at Willamette, which is where my path to being a physicist began, among other things, when I signed up for my first physics class. When I was in Europe that previous summer, I had neglected to respond with the card asking my intended major, and they had randomly assigned me as my advisor the chairman of the physics department. He had to sign my registration card, of intended coursework. On a whim, and wanting to make a friend in the faculty, I signed up for his first semester physics course. I was there to get a classical education, after all? Could I call myself an educated American gentleman if I did not know physics? It was as easy as that to decide.
Now I sit on the hard marble floor with a Ph.D. listening to academics talk about being ASU being #1. Don't you see where your attitude gets you in life?
"We'll get started in three minutes....blah...blah...get started with the challenge," the man with the microphone says. That's clear enough. I start packing up.
12:26 I stand by the door in the back of the room while the large white guy who spoke before lunch gives instructions to the tables for the Spark Tank Challenge. The idea is to come up with a pitch for an AI product idea based around a specified theme. One then shares with the table. They will decide which is best and that will go on the next round, and people will come on stage. Eventually there will be a winner. We are take forty five minutes for the first round at the tables. I definitely made the right choice. The fuck if I'm going to share my good ideas that way. Not that anyone will steal them, because nobody does that, but rather they might like it, and say what a good idea it is, and I will go on the next round, where I lose to something that is more diverse. But even getting that far will disgust me. I don't want their approval. How horrifying it would be for them to think my ideas are good, these strangers. I would have to hate my own ideas, and then what would happen to my retirement plan?
I grab a glass of lemonade and, lo!, now there are real cookies, so I take a sugar cookie and head out the time. I do in fact want to see the followup of the Spark Challenge, once I no longer have to participate. Dang it's getting very hot out here. How long until I'm safe to go back inside? I had been musing about things to say, if accosted and summoned to join the group struggle session, especially by the type of academic persons who expects to be obeyed by the likes of me?
Sorry, I have to stay over here. I have morbid claustrophobia. A medical condition. That might work, yes.
My stomach now doesn't feel so good. Wraps. Lemonade from a mix. Chobani yoghurt. A cookie plus a bite of another. They took away the coffee! There should always be coffee available at an intellectual conference. A proper full service hotel would never make that mistake, even after taking lunch away. People need to be jacked to think properly.
Still a half hour to go. I remembered he said that they are going to switch tables around in a second round, so we get to share more ideas with different people. My number will remain at zero shares of ideas, thank you very much. Maybe I can walk around campus. I could go into Hayden and read Sendak's My Brother's Book again. Or track down James Russell Lowell's journals like I wanted. Or I go to the Noble (the science and engineering library) and copy out the table of contents of one of the classic quantum field theory books that I don't currently own and don't want to buy. That's the secret to learning physics. Memorize the table of contents before you start. Learn it like lines of poem that you can recite, or like lines from a monologue in a play. The less you understand the words, the better it will work. Just freaking learn them and over time your brain will build the architecture to understand what the words mean. Not overnight, but it will work.
The ambiguous space between ironic and not-ironic. I think about that phrase again, about where my consciousness tends to live, and where I greet the world from. It's a defensive posture. It's for protection. But how ironic is it, to use the term not-ironic to mean "straight". Unironic? Or does it mean that? Dang it's really hot out here on the patio now.
1:01 PM. I'm in the Hayden Library, officially playing hooky from the conference. It is cool inside. There are no public terminals for the catalog. One must use one's own device. Bit by bit the libraries are being deconstructed until they become empty spaces with comfortable chairs. I know where the Sendak books are, but how about James Russell Lowell? How about I just walk the stacks and let my eyes roam. Yes, let's do that.
Now I'm on Level Four. I almost got to Sendak corner but my eyes landed on the Hollywood section, on a biography of George M. Cohan. Next to it I see Twenty Years on Broadway, written by Cohan himself. I think about the Cohan statue in Times Square, in the heart of the theater district, and how one day they will pull it down like they did the statues of Robert E. Lee. So I take the book off the shelf and sit down at table, and it is propped open with my leg as I type this.
On the title page is written Twenty Years on Broadway and the years it took to get there: THE TRUE STORY OF A TROUPER'S LIFE FROM THE CRADLE TO THE "CLOSED SHOP" By George M. Cohan. On the opposite page is a lithograph of Cohan in his prime, with a wry smile. Published by Greenwood Press, Publishers, Westport, Connecticut.
Westport, you say? That's where Lucy and Ricky Ricardo lived in I Love Lucy. It's also where Samantha and Darrin lived with Tabitha in Bewtiched, at least after the initial episodes in Manhattan. Westport was one of my first stops after finally fleeing Staten Island. I had to check it out.
Page 1, Cohan writes: Chapter 1: How it Came About .
Until a few minutes ago, I had no more idea of ever writing this story than I had of growing a Vandyke beard.
I can hear this is the voice of James Cagney, who played Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, which I have seen about eight times.
I then skip to the very last page. Cohan closes the book with:
With these few remarks, I now wish to announce my immediate and permanent retirement from the literary field.
followed by a short quote from the play "Peck's Bad Boy," which if you saw the Cagney movie, you know is the role that young George made his own while touring with his family, the Four Cohans on the Vaudeville circuit. There used to a circuit for entertainers to make a living. Amazing. Anyway, the quote is:
"And so he snuck off, all alone by himself, and nobody didn't see him no more"
CURTAIN
Now how the heck is this the quote I wind up stumbling upon, of all sentences in this vast library?
1:58 -- I am back in the ballroom. I got too curious about the Spark Tank Challenge to wait any longer. Leaving the library I felt how the heat was now getting uncomfortable. In the cool Student Pavilion, coming in from the lobby into the ballroom I saw a young woman, a catering employee, pushing car with metal urns on it towards one of the doors. Coffee has arrived! Perfect timing.
I have to force myself to hang out at a distance while he sets up the urns, so as not to hover over her. Then minute she leaves I pounce with my cup. Should I now hang out at the door? I decide to check out the building. I go down the side wall. In the noisy auditorium people are at tables talking, and walking about. With my coffee in hand, I decide to check out the building. I go along the side wall opening the doors, checking to make sure I can get back into the ballroom. In one I find a short hallway to the outside and a storage room. I explore the storage room. Chairs and tables are stacked. I find a back entrance to the alley by the stage, coming and going through the divider doors unnoticed like the spy I am. The the guy with mike announces the first round winners of the Challenge. He announces the names of the teams, chosen by each table. They are the goofy fun names that people came up with. As one is announced, all the people, all men, at the table stand up and cheer raucously. People are really into this.
The man says there will now be a second round where people can pitch their ideas to another table, and they get two minutes this time, over the course of the next thirty-five minutes. I look at the elevated stage, the portable kind erected for such events. I notice how easily I might slip underneath and take a nap behind the short black skirt curtains. I could listen to the whole shebang above me in peace. But what if the stage collapses in a freak accident? That would be ironic and tragic, when they found me. What on earth was he doing there?
Wanting to explore the other side of the room, I move in front of the stage. As I pass the monitor on the floor, in a narrow opening, a guy at one of the nearby tables points at me and says "there it is!" loudly. I jump like cat. Turns out he's pointing at something behind me. That kind of thing happens to me all the fucking time, like the world is trying to freak me out.
On the other side of the room, I check out a few more doors. Another store room with coaxial cables bounded in loops on hooks. Nothing interesting so I move on. This is a boring building, on the scale of zero to Nancy Drew. No apparent mysteries.
By now there are many empty tables in the room. People have left or clumped together. Thinking it now safe to take a seat, I find an empty table and sit down, kibutzing on the conversations at neighboring ones.
Perusing the room, I had looked for my coworkers, scanning the tables without making eye contact, lest I be spotted and unable to escape. I see no one I recognize. I begin to think I'm the only sucker in the lab who actually showed up here.
On the wall, I notice the large projected graphic, ten feet tall, of human hand. I had been staring at it all morning while sitting on the floor. I had thought it was a hand making the peace sign, with two fingers extended. I suddenly notice that all this time the pinkie is also raised. Only the ring finger is held down by the thumb. For a second I am confused and then I realize this is the official hand sign of ASU, mimicking the trident pitchfork of the Sun Devils. One does this while thrusting one's hand forward, as if stabbing one's opponent, who is perhaps not a person but some form of oppression or self-limiting belief. I make the hand sign while I sit, forking the air. It feels awkward. Fork 'em devils.
 |
| A view from the floor of the ballroom inside the Student Pavilion at ASU, on the afternoon of Empower 2025, the eighth such annual event. Here we see the judges of the Spark Tank Challenge listen to the AI project pitches from the team "The Strawberry Sparrows" during the second round of the challenge. In the background notice the Fork 'em Devils hand sign projected onto the wall. |
2:56 PM -- I am on the floor again, at almost my original location, as I need the power outlet to keep my phone and laptop alive. I am tired and I want to head out. But I want to see the end of the challenge. I want to say I stayed. I want to hear the winning pitch. So far I have heard no announcements other than the funny names of the winning teams. But now the judges are on stage...
One by one the teams go up to the stage:
Tech Echo --- three minute pitch. ECHO stands for Employee Companion for Holistic Operations, the guy says. Silence. Confusion. Who is supposed to talk. C'mon guys. Get it together. Somebody talk, or at least tap dance. Get it the old Vaudeville try, like the Four Cohans. My butt is getting sore.
ECHO--wait they have slides? Are the pitches all based on existing projects? ECHO is designed to promote every employee's growth, he stays. Integrates with Zoom and Slack. I'm about to barf. I suddenly remember the guy this morning who went off an a tangent about how LinkedIn was the combination of all good things about social networks, and how the young people really loved expressing themselves on LinkedIn. How more out of step with these people can I possibly be?
I shouldn't have eaten that second cookie. Any questions for ECHO? I want to raise my hand and ask what is the fucking point of this? But that would rude. Is this a real project that people are spending resources on? The coffee must be kicking in because I'm getting feisty again. Or just punch.
Next team. Some stupid name I can't remember long enough to type it. If they don't grab me, I'm out of here. An autonomous research agent that simulates experiment and uncovers insights. No slides. A lab partner that never sleeps, he says. Data from experiments is dumped in a collective pool of scientists around the world. Hypothoses are automatically generated by AI. Gaps are identified in various research data. This is a terrible idea. No one wants to share their data like this. The guy presenting this realizes this and tries to justify when someone would want that. But no one will ever want this. It might as well be a portal for sharing your excess grant money.
But these are original ideas after all. The first team actually had made a slide deck. I bet they win.
I look at the room. Most people have left. I'm actually one of the last ones here. I feel embarrassed about that somehow. Fork 'em, I'm staying to the end, or at least one more team.
Team Villain is on stage. A guy runs to the stage. A woman speaks. Their pitch scenario: Imagine being a professor. Too many emails arrive in the morning. Meetings. Classes. Professors are overwhelmed. They provide a small skit. Clever! Their solution: an AI generated personalized podcast for professors each morning to keep them focussed and on track. Daily clarity in minutes. They have a slide deck but weren't using it. Now their presentation is falling apart. They need to click a link that isn't there. They can't find it. Finally a slide with the link. Prep Cast. That's the name of their soluton. That's the AI generated podcast that stressed out professors will listen to when they get up each morning, to destress. Riiiiiiiiiiight. The professors will be doing that for sure, lassie. The AI voice starts on a simulated Prep Cast. Tells the professor that students are struggling with module two. OK maybe this is interesting. No. I still don't think it will work. An interesting idea. But no one will have time to listen to it. Back to the skit. The professor character says thanks to Prep Cast, my day is organized. Old school advertising from the Golden Age of television. I love it. This team should win.
Team Top Gun. Their idea is about using AI to reduce time of vendor onboarding by the university. Vendors are classified by risk, and flagged for further review. It is clear and concise and serves as specific need. Probably the most practical and useful idea. Too bad they didn't have a funny skit to show it off.
"We have our last team..." oh, thank God.
Team Elite Eleven Plus-- Project is called "Career Spark". Support every student's career journey, especially first generation students without business networks. Who has a business network? ASU's career-powered eco system. Example student: young woman of color who needs resume optimization. Puts students at the center of their career journey. All the right buzzwords and phrases. Interview simulation. Career Advisor bot that looks like a robot in the graphic. Robot, dear robot, tell me what my career should be.What student doesn't obsess about this already? At least they did in my day. Are students that hapless?
Now the judges tally the scores. Scores? First we have audience applause-o-meter. I applaud for the Team Top Gun, the sensible vendor onboarding tool. Team Elite Eleven Plus, the last, wins the applause of meter by a huge margin.
Now the guy on stage is thanking people for the day's event. WE ARE ALMOST DONE! Thank God. He bids us to recycle around our tables. A good sign we are minutes away from adjourning. We wait for the judges. A woman yells from the audience, "tell us some jokes, Kyle". I like her spirit.
"We couldn't decide on one winner so we chose two." the judge says, First is Top Gun, the vendor onboarding bot! Tied with is the last team---the diverse career bot by the diverse team.
That's it. Music plays.The house lights up up. People move to the exists. I am sitting on the floor. My hamstrings have started to hurt and my tendons are going numb from sitting on the floor. I wonder if I can walk.
On the way out I passed the "compost" and "recycle" bins. Both are heaping will all manner of random garbage, in total defiance of the rules they keep mentioning. Oscar's going to come and kick your ass, you waste scofflaws. As I head out the door I notice there are bowls of popcorn. I grab a paper bowl and fill it. As I do I fumble the bowl and the popcorn goes all over the table. No one is watching, but I dutifully sweep up all the popcorn with hand and pour them into my bowl. I may be a malcontent but I am not going to abuse the catering staff. I'm not going to be that guy. Finally I am out the door. It is so fucking hot now.
Good job, Devils. We forked 'em indeed.
