“Lee Sedol, the Strong Stone, 9 dan master of Go, the most creative player of his generation and
the only human being who has ever defeated an advanced artificial intelligence system in tournament settings, lost his voice when he turned thirteen.”
So begins the final section of The Maniac, a work of literary fiction in which Chilean author Benjamin Labatut presents the life of mathematician John von Neumann using historically based but hypothetical accounts from people who knew him personally and professionally.
While readers will be left wondering about the claim that scientists at Los Alamos played Go, two of von Neumann’s contributions connect his life to the factual account of the match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo that concludes the book. One of these contributions is von Neumann’s development of MANIAC, the first functional electronic computer. The other is his theoretical work on the concept of self-replicating machines, which somewhat anticipates the machine learning that allowed AlphaGo to master Go. More generally, the book does an excellent job conveying von Neumann’s brilliance and moral ambiguity.
The Hungarian-American John Von Neumann (1903 – 1957) was one of the most brilliant and influential mathematicians and scientists of the early and mid-20th century. His research spanned the foundations of pure mathematics, chemistry, quantum physics, economics theory, the foundations of computer science, and included seminal work in game theory, automata, and artificial intelligence.
Labatut has written a somewhat fictionalized but well researched and historically inspired biographical account; each chapter covers different decades of his life written in the voice of some of his family members, close friends, and professional colleagues including the physicist Eugene Wigner, mathematician Gabor Szego, economist Oskar Morgenstern and many others.
One chapter is from the point of view of the American physicist Richard Feynman who interacted with von Neumann while working on the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, and who mentions that the scientists there played a lot of competitive chess. “Then someone brought in a Go board and we started playing on that too. Vicious, endless games with no time limit against some of the smartest guys I ever met.” The reference to Go is a thread that is wonderfully connected later in the book to von Neumann’s work on automata, artificial intelligence, and views about the future relationships between humanity and technology.
The final chapters cover the match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo in 2016. Even though the readers of the E-journal know much more of the technical details than is recounted here, Labatut does a wonderful job of conveying the greater significance of the match along with the thoughts and emotions of those involved and directly affected. The Maniac will be interest to anyone, Go player or otherwise, who wishes to learn a bit more about one of the key architects of our modern technological world, as well as those who would like to learn more about what motivates so many of us to study and revere the game of Go.
- Peter Schumer and Dave Weimer, edited by Chris Garlock