SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Hi Sarah, I will be reading this in a few days.

If anyone else interested to join, the story could be found here: https://www.tor.com/2018/05/22/the-gu...

Excellent! I’ll be here.

I finished it. Such a fun one with magic and AI and a motley crew, thanks for recommending it.

I'm a few days late- sorry about that.

I feel really stupid - because I didn't really get it... lol. I'm working what feels like around the clock and I'm tired so bear with me.

The trick - it was just having their friends play the machines while the AI was distracted? Was there some other trick that I wasn't reading between the lines on? The one character, the driver said he took them for a grand.. which really isn't that much. Even 100 people taking a grand all at once split four ways isn't that much... I don't know. Sometimes McDonald is too clever for me.

But I liked the story right up until the end, and if I had gotten the ending I would have loved it I think.

Sarah wrote: "I'm a few days late- sorry about that.

I feel really stupid - because I didn't really get it... lol. I'm working what feels like around the clock and I'm tired so bear with me.

The trick - it was..."

I did not notice that a grand seemed really small, but now that you mentioned it....

As for the trick, yeah it's just a matter of distraction. Which is now I am confused since the AI even in normal condition would have eyes everywhere, right? Or maybe it got too worked up and disregard other things? Or, maybe they did it in such subtle ways (since they're insiders after all) so the AI's alarm system did not notice anything weird?

Yeah I kind of wondered about that too. The AI is watching all things everywhere all the time, so it doesn’t really make sense that it would suddenly not notice?

It’s a short story so I won’t pick it apart too much. I like what he was trying to do, and I always enjoy his writing.

Do you know that he's got a new novel coming up? Forgot the name though

He is so versatile.
Mars. Africa, Nepal, India, Brasil, Turkey. The Moon.
Now Reno, Nevada. I have been to that casino! A mix of the Silver Legacy and El Dorado?

Just got into a discussion yesterday at breakfast, about how AI will start to affect our lives in small to medium ways, at the beginning, probably in our lifetimes. Before getting to "The Mind" stage like in Ian M. Banks' Culture novels. Well hopefully in that direction, not SkyNet.