• books exploring AI

    From August Abolins@1:153/757.21 to Kurt Weiske on Monday, March 24, 2025 20:24:00
    Hello Kurt Weiske!

    ** On Monday 24.03.25 - 07:11, Kurt Weiske wrote to Rob Mccart:

    There's a series of books by William Hertling about an AI
    being developed - it came out about 10 years ago. I should
    re-read them and see how it aged.

    Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears
    (Singularity #1) (English)
    Hertling, William 9780984755707
    Liquididea Press 11/19/2011 $14.95

    A.I. Apocalypse (Singularity #2) (English)
    Hertling, William 9780984755745
    Liquididea Press 05/24/2012 $13.95

    The Last Firewall (Singularity #3) (English)
    Hertling, William 9780984755769
    Liquididea Press 08/05/2013 $13.95

    The Turing Exception (Singularity #4) (English)
    Hertling, William 9781942097013
    Liquididea Press 03/05/2015

    Sound interesting.. especially since the author seems to have a
    technical background..

    "A fifteen year veteran of the technology industry, he holds
    ten patents on software and internet technology, developed web
    and social media strategy at Hewlett-Packard, and is a frequent
    speaker at SXSW Interactive. He's been building online
    communities since 1986 when he ran seven phones lines into the
    back of his Apple //e to create an online chat system. An
    active blogger since 2002, his website, williamhertling.com,
    receives more than 50,000 visitors a year."

    The last AI-related novel about runaway-AI was:

    Daniel Suarez's Daemon and Freedom(TM),

    ..those two were not bad a bad journey, but the premise of
    fully autonous/invincible androids and vehicles seemed a bit
    far-fetched.


    I bought the first three books in the series, and now there's a fourth. I'm leery to buy it on Amazon, as they've taken away the ability to download ebooks from the web site.

    Download is still possible, but only to Kindles directly or
    readable with their online app.

    I just revisted the options for one of their ebooks. I don't
    like it. It seems that you can only access the material with
    their "1-Click" ..and that automatically charges your credit
    card and does not provide an option to confirm your selection
    or back out! I had to go through the RETURN process inorder
    to get my credit card refunded.


    I was able to download all of my library and copy it into
    Calibre - but don't know how to do that with future
    purchases.

    Yep.. I used to do the few Amazon ebooks did the same way. I
    processed the file to Calibre and then moved it to my Kobo.

    BTW.. for a more substantive read on AI, check out this:

    The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can't Think
    the Way We Do | Paperback

    Erik J Larson

    Harvard University Press | Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

    Computers / Artificial Intelligence / Artificial Intelligence - Natural Language Processing /
    Technology & Engineering / Social Aspects
    Published Oct 11, 2022
    9780674278660



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  • From Kurt Weiske@1:218/1 to August Abolins on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 14:02:08
    August Abolins wrote to Kurt Weiske <=-

    Download is still possible, but only to Kindles directly or
    readable with their online app.

    Yes, but they recently removed the ability to download to a PC. I use
    Calibre as an e-book manager, and want to be able to keep backups
    available. I went through the laborious process of downloading my
    ebooks to date before the cutoff. For any new books, I'd need to use an
    old version of Kindle for PC that still had the feature, then search
    for the new book in the content directory (they're not intuitively
    named)



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