On a real mountain under sunny skies, why talk about AI? Because we are there to talk about AI

At 8300 feet, the altitude at Deer Valley in Park City, Utah, bothers me a bit. A little headache, a racing heart, the knot of anxiety knowing that I will wake up many times during the night. The beauty of the place makes it worth it, of course. Evergreen trees gently sway in the breeze; leaves are already turning autumn colors; the crystal-clear blue sky shows off the mountains to their best 3D effect.

How I wish I could stay outside. Touch grass in the real world and discuss, say, fall bird migration or the fly-fishing trip I took last year. But I have been flown by Fortune to participate in a fancy annual conference called Brainstorm Tech. I will moderate panels, host breakfasts, conduct fireside chats, cover sessions, and eat, eat, and eat some more.

I am incredibly lucky to cover an amazing beat that is filled with fascinating people and stories. What a great gig I have - I am very grateful for it and work hard to do my best at it.

Amd that means talking a lot - all day, every day - about AI. The promise of AI. The ROI (return on investment) of AI. The fast pace of AI. The past, present and future of AI. How do you use AI? How is your company using AI? How do you employees feel about AI? What are your most important use cases? What models do you use, and does your CEO and board have AI FOMO?

The sun is bright in my eyes as I interview the Chief Revenue Officer at OpenAI. How can I get her to say something newsworthy? Anything at all? I squint at her, wondering if she is actually concerned about those billions of dollars destined for data centers to keep those LLMs cranking out content (including all of the output from my own prompts).

I chat with tech leaders from Deloitte, from Nike, from Blackstone, from American Express. There's a roundtable with execs from companies like Zillow, Experian, Salesforce and Glean. It's a fun, boisterous bunch of smart people at this conference, to be honest, who I know spend lots of time flying around the country to speak on panels, network at conferences, and chat with people like me about what they are doing with AI.

But oh, how I would rather lie back under a star-filled sky, surrounded by mountains, shooting the breeze about our true feelings about AI, and technology generally, and how in some ways we wish we could go back to the 80s and 90s, when we were teenagers (I know many of these leaders are Gen X like me, I just know it) and how we used to toast marshmallows with no smartphone in our pocket, no ChatGPT to chat with, just fireflies in the dark and the occasional dog bark -- or was that a wolf?

But we are here to discuss AI, after all. So we sit up straight in our panel chairs and ask the questions and share the use cases and get down to business. Next up on the mainstage…join us for yet another roundtable…can I pin you down for a 1-on-1 with my client?

Finally, on the last night at yet another dinner, we share drinks on a picturesque balcony and swap war stories about travel and family and injuries and I get to dig deeper. These are not executives talking about products and models and infrastructure; these are dads and moms and folks that love karaoke 🎤 and hot air balloon rides. They work for big companies and deal with the daily office politics like we all do. They love mountains and skiing and the evergreens and the rustling leaves, just like me. AI is their job, not who they are.

In moments of vulnerability, after a couple of drinks, we share our real worries. She fears her kids will not learn critical thinking because of AI. He knows some workers who are losing their jobs. One leader is burnt out from business travel, while another is feeling the pressure from his boss.

Maybe it is the alcohol mixed with the altitude, but we clink glasses, laugh too loudly, admit what keeps us up at night. For a little while, it feels like the 80s and 90s again — before smartphones, before AI, when all we had to worry about was whether the call outside in the darkness belonged to a dog or a wolf.

We fly home tomorrow, when we will learn about the Charlie Kirk assassination, and the latest Sam Altman interview, and the newest research blog posts and how the stock market is doing. We have come down the mountain and it's time to keep doing the work.