Last week, three unpresidential Isis writers visited the Presidents’ Summit, an AI-themed event for presidents of Oxford University societies. They had thoughts, and a lot of free drinks. Only the thoughts are below, entirely human-written. We write for free: you can’t replace us with ChatGPT if you don’t like it.

 

Mary:

In the name of journalistic integrity, it’s worth sharing that I harbour a deep resentment and disdain for AI.

 

Maybe it’s because I’m afraid of computers taking my job and producing soulless, bad writing where the only redeeming quality is that it’s quick and free. Or, even worse, starting to produce good writing.

 

So, I admittedly entered the Presidents’ Summit with reservations. But when I arrived, it was instead almost disappointingly human. That is to say, comfortingly recognisable and normal.

 

Perhaps I had anticipated that the event would be swarmed with the sleek, technologically inclined Oxford crowd, who I had imagined to be a couple of cutthroat 19-year-old startup founders—Sam Altmans with an Etonian inflection. Instead, it was mainly Ruskin students who were there to present their largely critical pieces not made with, but instead inspired by, or in response to AI, and fellow journalists who spent most of the night hovering around the open bar.

 

So, after loosening up with a couple “algorithmic fizzes”, I finally worked up the courage to hunt down event organiser Reuben Meller to ask hard-hitting questions such as, “what is an AI cocktail, exactly?”

 

Humans, however, unlike AI, have an immense capacity to be defensive. Upon finding out we had come for The Isis, Meller hit back with a prompt, “I know you guys like to read into everything,” before eventually explaining in a fairly roundabout manner that it just meant that ChatGPT had come up with the recipes.

 

But who am I to disappoint my host? Upon reading into the whole cocktail scenario, I concluded that perhaps I should stop constantly working myself into a frenzy about AI taking over the world.  Because as long as AI’s best cocktail is a vodka Coke with cranberry juice, humans are still the top dogs.

Prune:

The event took place in an aggressively lit room at Lady Margaret Hall. Inside was a DJ setup, a continuous film projection on the wall showing a teenager walking through the landscape with his eyes glued to his phone, and a modest bar.

 

The pitch implicitly promised attendees: a golden networking opportunity to meet one’s hierarchical peers, with a ready-made LinkedIn post for the following morning, and all manner of activities on the theme of AI (towards which, incidentally, the organiser’s position wasn’t entirely clear beforehand). An unmissable high-end event blending tradition and modernity, a twenty-first century mixture bringing together the university hierarchies of yesteryear for a proper back-patting session AND, as a bonus, an informational session on AI’s best-kept secrets, to finally acquire the informational and technological capital necessary for tomorrow’s leadership. In short, Elon Musk’s wet dream.

 

The event turned out to be surprisingly democratic, the required “president” status quickly became a mere formality. One attendee even claimed to be the future president of a mollusc society that doesn’t yet exist—after all, a president is a mindset. The gathering was therefore an intimate hub where entrepreneurial minds could mingle with the most refreshing ideas. In this sense, the modest turnout proved rather fortunate, transforming what aspired to be yet another stuffy Oxford networking affair into something where one could actually manage a genuine conversation, if you were willing to pay the £14 entrance fee.

 

Included in £14 ticked were the infamous AI cocktails. These had remained one of the evening’s great mysteries, generating equal measures of impatience, curiosity and skepticism among the Features team. Remarkably, even within our Oxonian publication—where avant-garde thinking is supposedly a cardinal virtue—several conservative voices expressed concern about these techno-liquid concoctions. As it turned out, the bar was utterly conventional. Just two options graced the menu: The Turing Test (vodka, coke and cranberry juice) and Algorithmic Fizz (pineapple, orange and lemon juices with a teaspoon of sugar and a shot of vodka).

 

Because, what possible relationship could exist between these thoroughly unremarkable cocktails—handed out in leaking cardboard cups once spoonfuls of sugar had been unceremoniously dumped within—and the supposed anthropological threat of artificial intelligence? Perhaps it was a meta-commentary, a performance piece using the mundane ritual of consuming mediocre alcohol mixed with subpar fruit juice to celebrate human imperfection in all its glory? A statement that our human—too human—flaws, however ridiculous, will always retain moral and aesthetic superiority over robotic sophistication? Highly doubtful. Still, let’s not be unkind. The bar was unlimited.

Myles:

You people want to hate everything, don’t you? They gave you a gathering of the power brokers of Oxford, the greatest minds of the University, the awe-inspiring leaders of societies, and you thought it “sounded pretentious”. They made the theme AI. Artificial intelligence, the engine of the future, dragging us to our inevitable destinies in the stars, and you said it “sounded dumb”. And when that AI fashioned us innovative new cocktails, you asked, “Why did it put cranberry juice in the warm vodka coke?”

 

I liked it. It was fine. I will even go so far as to say I probably wouldn’t have had anything better to do from 8 to 9:30 pm on a random weeknight. (Maybe.) The student journalists were milling around the few AI displays, all sneery and uncomprehending, but the wise, down-to-earth journalists of The Isis were having fun.

 

For an event centred around a technology with such a cold, heartless reputation, everything was friendly: the lighting was bright, and the people were nice and slightly apologetic for being there. The displays were fine. The room was warm, the pizza was warm, and the Tesco-brand vodka was warm, sloshing around in and slowly leaking out of the paper cups, dripping into some sort of future.∎

 

Words by Mary Lawrence Ware, Prune Fargetton, and Myles Lowenberg. Image courtesy of Prune Fargetton.