Meetup redux

1. The NYT crossword meetup

I went to a meetup that was supposed to be a talk about AI used in the creation of games, specifically in the context of crossword puzzles, and the talk was given by the lead crossword guy at the New York Times.

The guy who welcomed us and was going to introduce the speaker was a European man with a thick accent and the PA system wasn’t working so you couldn’t understand anything he was saying. As he was talking I turned to the person sitting next to me and asked, “Did you understand any of that?”

“No,” they said.

I only know that the guy was welcoming us because of the PowerPoint slides he showed, which included multiple QR codes. Every time a QR code was shown, about half the people in the audience raised their phones and took a picture of it.

I just find it weird we were in downtown Manhattan in some multi-billion dollar building and the PA system didn’t work and nobody could figure out why. It was the Capital One building. They’re a bank or something. They have money. You can’t figure out how to make the microphone work for a talk that’s being given to several hundred people?

Then the main speaker was handed the microphone, and he introduced himself by saying: “I am the lead games engineer at the New York Times.”

And then his very next sentence is: “We don’t do games engineering at the New York Times. All of our crosswords are made by hand by humans. We do not use AI, and we will never use AI.”

He then lectures us on the delicate relationship between AI and crossword puzzles.

Then after the talk was over some people went over to ask questions to the speaker. One guy won’t stop talking, and he keeps asking one question after another which are all really vague stupid questions, like: “Do you think computers will need to be conscious before we achieve AGI?”

When the speaker is done answering that, I don’t know what he said in response because I wasn’t listening because I was too angry, but then the guy who just asked that question then says, “Oh, just one more question, because I know other people have questions…” and looks at the rest of us who are trying to talk to the speaker. And then he asks his next question, the speaker answers it, and then he asks another stupid question. So he lied when he said he just had one more question.

I think his fifth or sixth question was: “Do you think AI is going to impact creativity? What is the future of AI and creativity?”

Holy shit, dude. That is easily the most derivative, stupid question ever. Do you want to ask him what the meaning of life is next? Did you actually think: what was the most vague, open-ended, time-consuming possible question I could ask? Why don’t you ask him: “What do you think consciousness is?” How about: “Do you think human brains are like… computers, sort of?” WHY WOULD YOU ASK THAT? You are cornering a guy whose sole claim to fame is managing a digital grid of letters that he already admitted he has no hand in actually creating!

And the speaker says: “Yeah, I think from now on, art is gonna be a combination of AI and not AI.”

2. The Seedance meetup

A different day I went to a meetup about Seedance, the AI video software. It starts with the host asking people to briefly introduce themselves.

The first guy talks for over three minutes and for some reason he thinks its a good idea to give his entire life story and his entire personal philosophy on everything. The guy leading the meetup was probably hoping people would say “Hi I’m Jeff and I like AI” and then stop talking. One of the sentences in this first guy’s answer starts with: “Our brains evolved in a state of nature…[blah blah blah]”

The question was: “Who are you?” Can you even imagine that? Someone asks you to briefly introduce yourself and you end up saying: “Our brains evolved in a state of nature…”?

The third guy says, “I have PTSD that numbed my body for many years until a few months ago.” The next person is a woman says, “I believe AI can be used for good and bad.” And then doesn’t elaborate. Wow, that’s really interesting, thanks for sharing that. Again, the question was: “Who are you?” These people were never asked: what is your entire dissertation on AI?

Then the PTSD guy raises his hand and says, “I want to say another thing,” and the host is just like, “No,” and aggressively points at the next person. I cannot express how insane that is.

At one point something starts making a really loud beeping sound. For over a minute. It’s obviously some guy using Find My on an AirTag or something like that, and the thing beeping is right next to the person leading our meetup who is talking over the beeping. And I’m thinking: wow, this guy is really annoying. Why doesn’t he turn it off, considering it’s pretty obvious where the thing is. Eventually he walks in front of the the guy talking and grabs it, and then announces to all of us that he owns the company whose building we’re in.

So I guess instead of being a rude idiot, what he did is completely fine.

At some later point the organizer says, “Seedance is a Chinese company.” And a guy in the back immediately stands up and starts talking, not raising his hand, just interrupting. He is Chinese and he says: “Quick correction. Seedance is not actually a Chinese company, because they have an office in Singapore and an office in the United States.” And the organizer says, “Oh okay, thanks for correcting me, I didn’t know that.”

I knew Seedance was created by ByteDance, which is the company that makes TikTok, and I looked it up afterward and the internet said: yes, Seedance is a Chinese AI application created by ByteDance, the Beijing-based parent company of TikTok.

4. The hiking pole woman

Later I was walking around I got stuck walking behind an elderly woman, on a perfectly flat, paved concrete sidewalk, who was using two heavy-duty alpine hiking poles to walk.

How does this help you walk? What topographical anomaly are you navigating? There might be some highly specific, obscure medical reason for this, but I can’t think of it, so it just comes across as profoundly, offensively stupid. Thanks a lot for making me look at your stupidity. You had to go for an urban hike down the sidewalk.

6. The Stoicism meetup

Another day I was going to this philosophy discussion meetup and on the walk over to the venue, I was standing looking at a gigantic map inside this food court along with a bunch of other people, all of us standing there looking at this map, and a guy rammed his baby stroller directly into me. And instead of apologizing, he leans in and mutters “Excuse you” right into my ear as he walks away.

What am I even supposed to do in that scenario? Start yelling at the 50 something year old man who is pushing a baby around in a baby stroller? Yeah I guess he won, because I couldn’t think of what to do and I was completely stumped. That’s cool that he was using a baby as a human shield.

So then the meetup. The guy running it had written two entire books on Stoicism. And I guess he decided that what everyone would want was for him to lecture us on his philohopy for like over an hour straight. Everyone else just quiet as he talks. That’s what the philosophy discussion meetup group should be I guess. While he was talking, I was on my phone trying to find flaws with his philosophy. When the floor opened up, I asked him the core problem we’d come up with: isn’t Stoicism basically a way to not engage in trying to fix actual systemic problems with society?

And his answer, was: “Well, actually, many Stoics were activists and opposed Nero, so maybe they did care about inequality.”

But I didn’t like this answer, because I felt like the structural logic of Stoicism itself, not the individual actions of its practitioners, is what makes it problematic. And Google agreed: “Figures like Seneca opposing Nero are the exception that highlights the rule of Stoicism’s inherent tendency towards accommodation.”

Shortly after this, a woman asked the question:

“What is Stoicism?”

That was her entire question. Also there was a guy I had sat next to before it started, who I couldn’t understand, because he was talking too quietly. He worked in tech and seemed like he thought he was too cool to talk to me. But I also couldn’t understand him. Then a girl sat down next to me and he got really excited and started talking to her enthusiastically. She immediately cut him off and said:

“I can’t hear you.”

7. The Colombian restaurant

This last situation isn’t a Meetup but highlights another weird interaction I had. I had just come from McDonald’s, because I had the McDonald’s app on my phone because I had reinstalled again, after previously uninstalling it in a rage because McDonald’s made me wait twenty-eight minutes for my food one time.

And I was really high or drunk at the time. I went into this Colombian restaurant to get a fried potato ball. And I was so high or drunk that I accidentally handed the guy working there my bag of McDonald’s instead of my wallet. And he looked inside the bag and said:

“What…?”

And I said, “Never mind.”