My new AI book

[Bertrand Meyer]

This announcement is not Eiffel-related but I hope it will be of interest to the members of this group.

 

I have just published a new book (274 + x pages) entitled “AI for Smarties”, with the subtitle “Understanding Artificial Intelligence”. It is a general introduction to AI, presenting the technology as clearly as possible. It does not shy away from the technical aspects and in particular the math, but explains everything and assumes no special knowledge from the reader. Actually (although it is a bit early for Christmas presents) I think a curious high-school student can understand everything and (I hope) enjoy it.

 

One of the reasons for writing this book was that I kept running into people with a good education who were fascinated by AI but had no clue of what’s inside; unable, for example, to answer such questions as “what does a neuron actually compute”? The book explains this and all the essentials, all the way to transformers (the explanations for which in the literature are, in my experience, often nebulous, complicated and confusing).

 

It also discusses many practical aspects of AI, with two chapters on education (one about self-learning and the other about educational institutions) and chapters respectively on using AI properly, the risks of AI (hallucinations, IP looting, AGI, good form covering bad substance etc.), organizing one’s career in the presence of AI, and of course the effect on software development.

 

It is an e-book, licensed like software with free updates for one year, as is appropriate in such a quickly evolving area.

 

The book has its own site (still in initial form) at https://ai-for-smarties.com/. You can download it from there.

 

The price is EUR 29.95, down to 24.95 if you order by July 15. There is an additional discount for members of this Eiffel Users Group valid until July 12: 3 euros, bringing the price to EUR 21.95. To use it, apply the following discount code on checkout:

 

                EIFFEL_USER_GROUP

 

I hope you like the book (and help publicize it).

 

-- Bertrand Meyer

["João M. Rocha"]

I just bought a copy. Thank you!

João

P.S: I’m not sure if you already sent the announcement to the people who subscribed to the waiting list on the day of your ACM webinar (May 7). If you did, I just wanted to let you know that I signed up for it but didn’t receive anything, so you may want to check that.

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[Bertrand Meyer]

Dear Joao,

 

Great. Yes, I am in the process of writing to the people who registered after the ACM Webinar. It takes some time because I am replying to them one-by-one. I see you in the list -- if that’s OK I will skip you since you already have the book!

 

(I am not sure you meant your message for the full Eiffel list but since you replied to it I am doing the same.)

 

Many thanks,

 

-- BM

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/eiffel-users/3F0655DC-B922-418C-84B6-137581A5A5DE%40gmail.com.

[João Rocha]

Oh, I see. That will take a while. Yes, feel free to skip me.

(I meant the public reply to help encourage other members to get the book :-))

João

On 7 Jul 2026, at 4:56 PM, Bertrand Meyer <Bertran...@inf.ethz.ch> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/eiffel-users/1e4e01dd0e29%242c537d60%2484fa7820%24%40inf.ethz.ch.

[Liberty Lover]

I bought. I downloaded. I got a summary. The question remains: To AI-Eiffel or not AI-Eiffel. What's the verdict and why?!? I keep having success with Eiffel using Claude, especially Fable 5, but Opus 4.8 is no kind of slouch either.