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y4ndsl 's review for:
The MANIAC
by Benjamín Labatut
In another easy 5-star read, Benjamin Labatut brilliantly fills the spaces between fact and fiction, right and wrong.
When We Cease to Understand the World is still one of my best reads to date, so I had insane expectations for The Maniac. I went straight to it, thinking it's gonna be another BANGER, and BANG it did.. it ruined me, rewired my brain chemistry.
The Maniac is another "non-fiction" novel composed of the stories of three great geniuses: Johnny Von Neumann who needs no introduction, Paul Ehrenfest, and David to AI's Goliath, Lee Sedol.
Labatut delivered the stories beautifully and with such urgency, you'd think you were physically there; you're assisting in the creation of the atomic bomb or you're watching the intense match of man vs machine.
The Maniac doesn't stay still, just like the people it was written about — men who made machines to push the world forward, regardless of the implications. And from a personal standpoint, as someone who had been forced to use AI or lose a job, Labatut's writing really did it for me:
"People felt helplessness and fear. It seemed we humans are so weak and fragile. And this victory meant we could still hold our own. As time goes on, it'll probably be very difficult to beat Al. But winning this one time ... it felt like it was enough. One time was enough."
When We Cease to Understand the World is still one of my best reads to date, so I had insane expectations for The Maniac. I went straight to it, thinking it's gonna be another BANGER, and BANG it did.. it ruined me, rewired my brain chemistry.
The Maniac is another "non-fiction" novel composed of the stories of three great geniuses: Johnny Von Neumann who needs no introduction, Paul Ehrenfest, and David to AI's Goliath, Lee Sedol.
Labatut delivered the stories beautifully and with such urgency, you'd think you were physically there; you're assisting in the creation of the atomic bomb or you're watching the intense match of man vs machine.
The Maniac doesn't stay still, just like the people it was written about — men who made machines to push the world forward, regardless of the implications. And from a personal standpoint, as someone who had been forced to use AI or lose a job, Labatut's writing really did it for me:
"People felt helplessness and fear. It seemed we humans are so weak and fragile. And this victory meant we could still hold our own. As time goes on, it'll probably be very difficult to beat Al. But winning this one time ... it felt like it was enough. One time was enough."