I am sorry to disappoint those of you who read the title of this post and are now eagerly anticipating a thorough analysis of the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers attempt to win the NBA championship with a single transcendent superstar (Allen Iverson aka AI aka The Answer) and a roster full of mediocre role players (spoiler alert: they did not).

Instead, the focus of today’s post is to solicit the questions you have about utilizing artificial intelligence as you determine whether generative AI is the answer for your workplace needs. Whether it’s Maillardet’s Automaton writing poetry in multiple languages in the 19^th century, Johnny 5 quoting the Three Stooges in the 1980’s, or trained AI voice model’s impersonating Johnny Cash singing “Barbie Girl” in 2023, there are plenty of examples of the frivolous use of artificial intelligence. But unless your boss is a huge Frank Sinatra fan who has been dying to hear what it would sound like if Old Blue Eyes crooned Green Day’s “Basket Case,” not terribly useful at work.

Fortunately, our Do We Really Need Another Session About AI? session at CMEpalooza Fall (Wednesday, October 18 — mark it in your calendar now) is here to help you figure out how AI can make your work life a little bit easier. In order to streamline this session and focus the presentations on the needs and knowledge gaps of the audience, our panelists have put together a few questions that they would love to have as many of you as possible answer (note from Scott: The over/under on participation is the same as the jersey number that Derek’s precious AI wore back in the day).

You can answer one question or you can answer all four (or two, or three questions), but we’re hoping that you can take a moment now to at least share your thoughts. I’ll leave the survey open until September 1 in case you would like to take a few days to reflect and come back later to respond.

Recently, I have been reading physicist Alan Lightman’s Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, which is lovely and thought-provoking and perhaps a wee bit pretentious. However, in the latest chapter I read, things took a turn. Lightman posed the following situation, which he refers to as the Smart Ant Conundrum:

Imagine a colony of highly intelligent ants. Suppose further that this ant colony lasts for a hundred years. Normal ant colonies last only 20 years or so, when the queen flies off to spawn another colony, but let’s assume that a long dynasty of queens have followed each other to replenish this particular colony. Each individual ant lives only a year, so there have been many generations of ants in this colony. This is an old colony. Over the century, these brainy ants create a great civilization. They build advanced structures underground. They compose music. They create paintings and theater. They write books and record histories of their society. They develop science and make theories about the cosmos, both inside the ant hill and beyond. They have emotions and intimate relationships. Then one day, a flood comes and totally destroys the ant colony. Totally. There is nothing left – no ants, no ant books, no ant paintings, no remnants. Nothing. Everything is completely destroyed. There’s no trace left in the universe of this magnificent ant colony. The question I ask myself: Did the ant colony have any meaning? And now, after the colony is gone, with no record of its existence, does it have meaning?

Yikes. I mean, geez dude, I’m just trying to make it to the weekend so I can sleep in for an extra 45 minutes before the cat starts attacking me and demanding his breakfast. I wasn’t prepared for a thought experiment about the meaningfulness of my existence, or lack thereof. This will require another cup of coffee.

One point to consider is that clearly this genius ant colony has never heard of using the cloud for data storage. If the colony of Pennsylvania is ever wiped off the map by a massive flood (thanks for nothing, New Jersey), Scott and I can take solace in that the meaningfulness of our existence is as secure as the structural integrity of whatever building houses the back-up servers on which the CMEpalooza archive resides. Our legacy will live on!

Speaking of CMEpalooza, the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall (Wednesday, October 18, write it down) will be coming out soon, hopefully by the end of the month. Scott would like everyone to know that his sessions are ready to be announced and I am the one holding up the works, which, while annoying, is also accurate. I wonder if any of those brainiac ants knows anything about ChatGPT…

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children grin,
But there is no joy in Paloozaville—the Sixers lost again.

Yes, it’s sad times in Paloozaville (again.) Our beloved Philadelphia 76ers lost (again) to their archrival Boston Celtics (again) in the second round of the NBA playoffs (again.) I won’t bore you with the details…oh, well, OK, I’ll bore you with a few of the details.

The Sixers were ahead 3-2 in the best-of-7 series after an unexpected Game 5 victory. They only needed to win one more game to take the series and relieve some of the angst of long-suffering Sixers fans. As is my wont, I took to social media to share my anxiety.

The day before Game 6, I was feeling a bit nervous.

What, you thought I only write haikus about CMEpalooza?

The day of Game 6, things were going great.

Then, unfortunately, they had to play the game, which, obviously, they lost. I handled it well.

Fortunately, there was a two day break between Game 6 and Game 7, so I had time to recover and rejuvenate. The morning of Game 7, also Mother’s Day, I woke up refreshed and full of love for all humankind.

Almost all humankind. And not a haiku, just to be clear.

Sadly, they again had to actually play the game, the result of which has already been well documented. Scott and I have been in mourning ever since.

On the bright side, I updated the CMEpalooza Archive with all the sessions from CMEpalooza Spring 2023. We’ve got like 500* sessions archived over there, so head on over and peruse at your leisure (we definitely don’t have 500 archived sessions. I made that up. But we do have a lot. Someone should count them.)