Revenge Of The Giant Robot Chickens

Not too long ago the children of Aberdeen struck a blow against the tyranny of their oppressors -- an army of giant robot chickens. But the chickens were not defeated and now the city's warring factions have formed a council hoping to keep their chicken overlords at bay. But there's a new robot chicken on the block, the Chickenator! When the new chicken starts to target council members, pecking them up one by one, Rayna suspects fowl play. How are the chickens tracking council members down so precisely? Could there be a spy in the council? Meanwhile, Jesse tries to hatch a plan to crack the chickens and set the human captives, including his older brother, free. Who will have the last cluck? This is a spectacular sequel to the riotous pun-filled Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens, winner of a 2015 Scottish Children's Book Award.

Why did the chicken cross the road? TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD! The city of Aberdeen has been reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland in the wake of invasion and giant robot chickens roam empty streets, seeking to peck out every last sign of human egg-sistence. Fighting for survival and desperate to save their family and friends, Jesse and Rayna must pluck up their courage and hatch a plan... Action, lasers, exploding eggs and chicken jokes aplenty--can a group of teenage friends really stop an army of giant robot chickens from achieving world domination? Read these two hilarious, pun-filled adventures from award-winning author Alex McCall and find out!

Why did the chicken cross the road? TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!! The city of Aberdeen is being terrorised by giant robot chickens who want to peck out every last sign of human resistance. The streets are empty, the adults have vanished - and those left behind are fighting for survival. Jesse and his friends are desperate to save their families and stop the feathered fiends. They hatch a master plan ... but can a gang of kids REALLY defeat an army of angry robot chickens? A hilarious, weird and wonderful adventure from a cracking new author.

In their latest caper, Ken and his EngiNerds crew are on the hunt for just one rogue robot. But who knows what kind of mayhem one mechanical creature can cause? And why is Ken the only EngiNerd who's worried about the runaway robot?

This book describes the living-room artifacts, clothing styles, and intellectual proclivities of American classes from top to bottom.

With a Little Help is my first serious experiment in self-publishing. I've published many novels, short story collections, books of essays and so on with publishers, and it's all been very good and satisfying and educational and so on, but it seems like it's time to try something new. With a Little Help consists of 12 stories, all reprints except for "Epoch" (commissioned by Mark Shuttleworth).

Stephen Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings. From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors business is far from usual: the beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing, the sales reps use self help books as manuals, no one has seen the CEO, no one knows exactly what they are selling, and missing donuts are the cause of office intrigue. While Jones originally wanted to climb the corporate ladder, he now finds himself descending deeper into the irrational rationality of company policy. What he finds is hilarious, shocking, and utterly telling.

A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them. Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us—and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole—and appear to assess Black and White defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And as autonomous vehicles share our streets, we are increasingly putting our lives in their hands. The mathematical and computational models driving these changes range in complexity from something that can fit on a spreadsheet to a complex system that might credibly be called “artificial intelligence.” They are steadily replacing both human judgment and explicitly programmed software. In best-selling author Brian Christian’s riveting account, we meet the alignment problem’s “first-responders,” and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Readers encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they—and we—succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story. The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity’s biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture—and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.