I welcomed our new robot overlords at Amazon's first AI conference

There's a certain oversized quality to a Las Vegas conference center that makes you feel like a child monarch: simultaneously powerful and helpless. Presumably, the rooms and corridors are cavernous because space is cheap in the desert, but the overall effect somehow manages to be stifling. It feels suspiciously big, as if you're never meant to leave. The trappings of a conference do nothing to dispel this feeling: everything is arranged -- your room, your food, your schedule -- and hey, look! They even have robots handing out snacks!