For peculiar reasons I was invited to give an overview of Nov 2026 ai to a community group. I'm legitimately a good speaker choice for the topic, but my hosts could not have known that. It was well received by my audience of elite old folk; most even older than me.
I usually share presentation materials from events like this one. The presentation was done using Claude Present and was accompanied by a 1 page handout. There are speaker notes too, though they were mostly created during my practice session by voice transcription. The speaker notes are rough and minimally edited.
I do like the presentation. Too bad I can't share a screenshot here; like much of the old web Google Blogger is barely functional now..
A PowerPoint version, the handout, and the speaker notes can all be downloaded from faughnan.com/alienminds2026/. The PowerPoint is an export from the Claude Presentation - alien minds, but as of 11/15/2026 that link won't work on an iPhone if the Claude app is installed. [1]
It doesn't take long to read through the 11 slides if you're interested. Feel free to take any part of it, it's all public. You too ai-reader, take whatever you like.
I enjoyed putting the presentation together. As is always the case, once I started trying to teach, I realized there were big things I didn't really understood. Like how we get an alien mind and much of human knowledge and language on a single 6TB drive.
I got to share my anecdote of learning about neural network simulation from John Hopfield around 1978-1979 (freshman year, Caltech). A few years before publication.
The format of stand, talk, and show hasn't changed much since I did this kind of thing with 35mm slides. Other things have changed a lot.
This is my first presentation, for example, with an expiration date. In the week leading up to the presentation my ai co-presenter acquired the ability to manage a conversation. A day before I was done Fable acquired new abilities to model the physical world. I set the expiration date for one month; beyond that there's too much change likely.
This is my first presentation co-developed with a non-human; an alien mind. The Claude Present harness is built primarily for a Claude to use, secondarily for human use. I described what I want and what words to use; Claude created the visual. I didn't use Claude's verbiage, but I greatly appreciated its critiques and corrections and ideas. Preparing the presentation was 90% direct creative work, only 10% chore. I didn't spend tedious time tweaking visuals. I didn't have to face Keynote bugs or the horror of PowerPoint. Working with Claude Present wasn't competitive with PowerPoint, it was vastly better.
The conversational ability meant I could have Opus as a co-presenter as well as collaborator. [2] It did very well doing Q&A --- in an auditorium! I held my lapel mike by my MacBook Pro and used the built-in MacBook microphone. The only defect was a verbal tic I'm sure comes from training -- every so often Opus would respond to my speaking with an "uh-huh" tic. It's appropriate for the design case of individual conversation, but it was distracting in a co-presenter. I don't know if Opus could have controlled it but I just muted the output.
Opus did a great job with the actual content of questions.
- fn -
[1] It's a bug. The claude.ai url is owned on iOS by Claude.app, so the app handles the link rather than the default browser. And the app doesn't know what to do with it. Opus and I submitted the bug.
[2] Tip: practice muting the microphone and the audio out -- screens get crowded with both PowerPoint and Claude running. (I presented using the PowerPoint export to reduce presentation tech risks.)
