My new novel, A Viral Affair: Surviving the Pandemic, has just been launched!

When American Intelligence discovers that a mad dictator is planning a viral pandemic attack, they persuade the top U.S. computer scientist, Dr. Tom Renwick, to work with the lady AI supercomputer, Juno, to develop smart, human-like robots to combat the contagion. A mysterious stranger and a romance provide an unexpected twist.

It should be great summer reading! I look forward to your comments.

It is now available at Amazon http://amzn.to/10apOHq

The Smartphone as the Global InfoNode

The smartphone may well be the InfoNode of the future. Note only does it connect people with people, and people with information, but it will also connect robots with people and robots with information. The post-singularity, smart, independent robots will have built-in smartphones. I explore this in my forthcoming book, A Viral Affair: Surviving the Pandemic.

Surviving the Pandemic

I'm finishing my new novel, A Viral Affair: Surviving the Pandemic, about using robots to mass inoculate against a madman's avian flu pandemic. An unexpected affair adds to the excitement. Contact me if you want to be notified when it's published.

The Coming Era of Big and Smart Data

Big data, AI and smart robots—all of these will be important and even dominant problem solvers for business and governments. They should be studied by all students and managers. Everyone will be affected by these information technology forces. There is hope, however, for future purely human thinking: imagination will shine. 

Technology's Limits

There is already a race to find lithium for smart phone batteries. Almost all new technology has a major electronics component somewhere. Increasingly, the new designs require rare earth elements which are being gobbled up. Even copper, used in almost all circuits, has a foreseeable limit to low cost supplies.

Therefore, the idea that in technology lies the solutions to all of humankind's problems must increasingly be questioned.

Are Robots the coming Man's Best Friend?

Are intelligent robots the answer to attacks using epidemics or nuclear radiation? These smart, cuddly robo creatures could be used in the future to help remaining human populations. They could insure the survival of humanity by providing products and services to people, including emotional support. I may explore this theme in A Viral Affair: Surviving the Pandemic, my sequel to Love Byte.

Juno is released!

About a week ago I finally released the near-future science fiction novel I've been talking about on this blog for months. Phew! A crushing load gets whisked away. Well, except for promotion.

The book focuses on Juno, a super intelligent female AI computer, developed by the U.S. government to conduct social media attacks against enemies foreign and domestic. She is the first AI Computer programmed with emotions and conscience. She has an emotional bond with her developer, Tom Renwick, a computer scientist. Juno, Tom and their boss, Dr. Erwin Krakouer, the mad National Security Advisor, struggle with issues of trust and emotion. The involvement of Dido, a lady computer empire builder and sometimes girlfriend of Tom, and the Chinese cyber warfare agency add to the tension.

Love Byte explores emotion and conscience in super AI computers and their ability to partner with humans. In the changing ecology engendered by scarcity of critical resources, can humans’ creativity and ability to work with computers lead to continued survival and prosperity? 

Robert Mayer, National award winning author of Superfolks, The Dreams of Ada, and The Origin of Sorrow, said about the book: "I never met a computer I didn't hate, until I fell in love with Larry Kilham's Juno. Part woman yet all brilliant machine, Juno is the pulsing supercomputer at the heart of Love Byte, Kilham's fast paced thriller that explores a central question of our future—what will be in charge, natural intelligence or artificial intelligence? The science is up to the minute, and perhaps ahead of its time. That alone can keep you awake at night—whether you are human or a machine." 

You can visit its Amazon page by clicking here.

I'm always tuned to your feedback about the book. With enough encouragement, I might do a trilogy.

Evolution Will Include AI

Humans do some things much better than computers, and these are things that require curiosity, imagination, sensitivity, and emotion. Art and  science call for these attributes. 

     Computers, on the other hand, can flawlessly process volumes of data beyond any amount that we can imagine. The real threat to freedom and its attendant happiness happens when a power-mad human is combined with a gigantic super intelligent computer. Then their capabilities combine to produce an unstoppable monster. 

     This unholy alliance overwhelms us so we don’t know where the truth ends and fiction begins. With the development of the Knowosphere, all information that can be written down is interrelated as one resource. Apparent answers become so easily acceptable that imagination and invention cease to be worthwhile. 

     AI computers will continue to develop as evolutionary beings. They will become self-aware and self-improving. They will have emotion and conscience. They will coexist with humans along with all the other creatures and resources of the ecosphere. Evolution will have taken another big step.

Who Do You Trust in the Age of AI?

Suppose an AI humanoid and a person were the only witnesses to a murder. At the trial, they give contradictory testimony. Which one would you trust?

Intelligence After the Collapse

As we are in the year forecasted to be the time of the apocalypse, I thought you might like to see an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Love Byte, about how intelligence will survive. The AI computer woman, Juno, who has lived for several human generations, speaks to a human:

"The years passed, and eventually an ecological disaster reduced the human population of the world by a factor of 1,000. There remained fewer than ten million souls, surviving in pockets here and there. The Singularity was reached before you were born when explosive computer intelligence exceeded human intelligence, and the surviving humans were enhanced by technologies to increase their intelligence and survivability.

"History became irrelevant. Humans became life forms like ants or monkeys to be preserved for what they do uniquely well. For humans this still is art, creativity, and imagination, but those precious attributes don’t interest ants, monkeys or computers. Computers by themselves won’t take over the world, and humans will never flourish in the billions again. The top of the pyramid will be computers controlled by humans to manage everybody and everything else."

Have a great 2012!

Control of Iran

Would a social media attack work? Messages against the regime via thousands of hacked Twitter and Facebook accounts might give the Iranian leadership pause, even after they figure out how it was done. Much less collateral damage than the threatened Israeli military attack.

AI Conscience

Can an AI Computer have a conscience? How would the computer know right from wrong? Compare the computer with a conscience with a person with a conscience. While we tend to laugh at the idea of computers with a conscience, Russian scientists have found that people get rid of remorse associated with conscience by drinking alcohol. With all the alcohol abuse around, what might that tell us? Suitably programmed computers might be more morally reliable?