What are you reading in 2026?

[gban007]

Finished rereading Elaine Cunninghams Counsellors and Mings trilogy. I enjoyed the books, and nice to be back in the Realms, but found the pacing a bit off at times, making it a slow read. I think mainly due to number of POVs and interweaving plot threads, im more used these days to books having these being longer to allow it to breathe more, or for shorter works to be focused more on limited POVs.
I also really liked following Matteo and Tzigone, but less so the other POV characters.
Was nonetheless an enjoyable read.

Have started Azure Bonds, and as a comparison is so fsr at least all from Alias' point of view, which is making for a tighter/ quicker read thus far.

 

[Retros_x]

I just finished "If anyone builds it, everyone dies," and I need something a little lighter to recover. Maybe I will reread The Road.

If its any comfort to you: we are lightyears away from real superintelligent AI - contrary to what the tech bros and hypefluencer are trying to sell us (or on the other hand doomsayers like the authors of this book). Current AIs are very high-scaled and sophisticated statistical models for pattern matching, glorified curve-fitting calculations. Impressive achievments of engineering, but has nothing to do with real cognition and reasoning.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If its any comfort to you: we are lightyears away from real superintelligent AI - contrary to what the tech bros and hypefluencer are trying to sell us (or on the other hand doomsayers like the authors of this book). Current AIs are very high-scaled and sophisticated statistical models for pattern matching, glorified curve-fitting calculations. Impressive achievments of engineering, but has nothing to do with real cognition and reasoning.

That doesn’t mean they won’t drive you insane faster than the Necronomicon.

All human lies, propaganda and delusions lumped together in one handy little package.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Have started Azure Bonds, and as a comparison is so fsr at least all from Alias' point of view, which is making for a tighter/ quicker read thus far.

I found Curse of the Azure Bonds to hold up fairly well, as far as old D&D fiction goes.

If its any comfort to you: we are lightyears away from real superintelligent AI - contrary to what the tech bros and hypefluencer are trying to sell us (or on the other hand doomsayers like the authors of this book). Current AIs are very high-scaled and sophisticated statistical models for pattern matching, glorified curve-fitting calculations. Impressive achievments of engineering, but has nothing to do with real cognition and reasoning.

Yeah, a lot of the TESCREAL nonsense is based on magical thinking. They have no idea how to make a super-intelligent AI, even conceptually, so they just say "AI will figure out how to do it."

That being said, with AI being used in military operations now, it's important to be skeptical, to think about the worst-case scenarios.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's not intelligence that poses the existential threat, it's the lack of it.