Last week in Budapest, we tried a different kind of AI event with
@cognition
No laptops. No long panel. No one pretending to listen while secretly checking email
We split the room into teams of “Cognition FDEs” and gave them a crisis:
- AM
- A budget airline cancels 47 flights
- 8,000 passengers are stranded
Their job was to design an AI customer support system that could actually help people: missed connections, kids, pets, luggage, angry passengers, the whole mess
The game itself was intentionally analog. Paper, pens, and projected “Mad Libs” prompts. But
@windsurf and
@DevinAI still ran the show
Teams sent me photos of their answers on WhatsApp. Once those landed in the right folder, Cascade ingested them, built a scorecard, and updated the live tracker on screen for everyone to see. The score was 'stranded passenger cases resolved'
Devin was also running in the background, reading the submissions and posting live 'tweets' to the room. Sometimes it praised teams. Sometimes it roasted them. Sometimes it gave actually useful advice
One team (with some folks from
@atomic_chat_hq) tried prompt injection in their answer (2 times, once they even wrote the prompt in 5 languages), and Devin called them out on screen both times. Probably the funniest moment of the night
People were laughing, arguing, designing, and thinking seriously about what AI should and should not do in a real operational crisis
That feels like the right kind of AI conversation
Huge thanks to everyone who came out in Budapest. I think we’re onto something with this format!