At Amazon's MARS Conference, Jeff Bezos Plots The Future With 200 (Very) Big Brains

Jeff Bezos has his left foot propped up on a fire pit, his face illuminated by the flames. A drink in his hand, he's feeling relaxed, often bursting out in that signature bellow of a laugh. Joining Bezos at the firepit that night and over the course of three days at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, California are about 200 of the world's smartest and most accomplished people–among them: two astronauts, at least one Nobel Prize winner, the former head of DARPA, NASA's former number two, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich ("BK," he's called here), MythBuster Adam Savage, Segway inventor Dean Kamen, and so on. With cigars and whiskey in their hands, these global power players are talking earnestly about Big Issues: gravitational waves, ground-breaking tools for helping the deaf perceive the world in new ways, cutting-edge robot grasping technology, hyper-efficient 3D-printed rocket engines, and AI, always AI. Welcome to Amazon's MARS Conference–or, as Bezos calls it, "Summer camp for geeks." Amazon's has numerous reasons for hosting the event.