MANIAC

Benjamin Labatut continues to question science and its limits, following on from his previous novel, "When We Cease to Understand the World". In MANIAC, the Chilean author presents us with three emblematic figures that mark the three different parts of the book. The prelude is dedicated to Paul Erhenfest, a physicist who commited suicide after killing his son. A tragic event, but one linked to a deeper crisis of a scientist, increasingly overwhelmed by a progress in science and mathematics in which he could no longer find any sense, any logic. Erhenfest saw the emergence of quantum physics theories as a kind of triumph of irrationality, of the inexplicability of the cosmos. The central part of the book continues with the life of John von Neumann, creator of the Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer Model I, one of the first electronic computers in history, from which the book takes its title. The character of the great Hungarian scientist is told in his incomparable greatness and in his most terrible sides by the many voices of the people who crossed his path. The result is an incredibly intelligent figure, but at the same time incapable of emotional involvement or moral or ethical doubt, an almost "dehumanised" figure who becomes more and more alien, or perhaps more like the artificial intelligence of which he himself was one of the fathers, thanks to his contribution to the development of processing systems and game theory. The last part moves directly to AI, in particular the story of the confrontation between Lee Se-dol, one of the greatest GO players in history, and AlphaGO, which manages to beat him repeatedly, driving him to despair, until a final game in which the champion manages to win thanks to a move not memorised by the AI. A novel that leaves the reader dismayed by a science that is advancing so rapidly that it is outstripping man's ability to understand it, undermining his certainties and his view of the world.

MANIAC
Benjamin Labatut
Adelphi, 2023