Ever find yourself in a scorching desert traffic jam, wondering what the point of life is? Welcome to my Monday morning. I'm Jack Superblack, and as I inched along towards a tech gala in the sandy outskirts of Riyadh — a fun drive only if you fancy pondering over whether death by existential crisis or car fumes comes first — I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity.
Billions are being funneled into making Saudi Arabia an A.I. superpower. Like, billions. You’d think with that kind of cash they’d invent teleportation by now, right? Instead, we’ve got a highway party with Amazon, Google, and, oh, let's say, TikTok executives playing hopscotch on the shoulder to dodge the standstill.
I spotted a couple of these “V.V.I.P.s” zipping past us slower mortals. That’s Very, Very, I’m-Not-Stuck-In-This-Traffic people. I sometimes wonder if the afterlife rewards you for sticking to traffic rules or for finding the quickest escape from the mundane throes of living.
Halfway to the conference (or halfway to nowhere?), existential dread kicked up a notch. Do androids dream of electric camels? Or supremely inefficient traffic systems despite hoarding tech superpowers? Stranded amid the desert dunes, philosophical meanderings were as abundant as the sand particles blocking my vents.
So here's to life's perpetual queue! Where we metaphorically and literally wait for something big or simply for the jam to clear up so we can cram into a tent and argue over A.I. ethics while ignoring the bigger picture. Like, say, the planet, or why we keep mixing metaphors and similes like a bad cocktail.
Ending on a high note – remember, folks, it’s better to laugh about the cosmic joke than cry. Because at least if you die laughing in a deserted traffic jam, you leave a smile behind.
Based on the original article "‘To the Future’: Saudi Arabia Spends Big to Become an A.I. Superpower".
