the MANIAC, or when machines strike deep inside enemy lines
“You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you tell me precisely what it is a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.” — John von Neumann
I recently came across a fascinating book called MANIAC as I was listening to Demis Hassabis's interview on the Lex Fridman Podcast.
The book is an exploration of mainly two themes: the tragedy of genius, and humanity's (last?) intellectual pursuit to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
The first part of book is a look at the life and times of Paul Ehrenfest, whose troubled brilliance eventually cost him his life. I was also fascinated by the story of George Cantor, the man who tamed infinities but eventually also lost his mind.
The second part of the book explores the extraordinary life of John von Neumann. It tries to narrate his life through fictional retellings by his peers, family and adversaries. I am reminded of Funes The Memorious, the man who could not forget. He was a true general agent, not unlike modern day AI labs claim to pursue, using math as his chisel to carve out foundations for various fields like Quantum Mechanics, Computer Science or Game Theory (the whole list will leave you breathless). This part of the book ends with von Neumann's mythical quest for creating self-replicating digital life, left unfinished after his passing.
The third part of the book is about AlphaGo - a program created by DeepMind - which beat Lee Sedol 4-1 in a 5 match game in Go in 2016, which at the time was thought of as one of the last bastions of human ingenuity. Lee Sedol shortly retired after this match. AlphaGo's successor AlphaZero went onto dominate Chess, Go and Shogi games by playing millions of games against itself, hill climbing over "policy networks", alluding to the first sparks of AGI. Demis Hassabis picks up the baton from von Neumann and has made great strides in realizing his dream.
If the book's patterns are to be followed, to see Beyond is to see darkness, not light. The profound eeriness Lee Sedol felt after move 37 will be felt by more and more. It is natural to feel bewildered when a machine can do better than you what you spent decades mastering. But it might also be strangely beautiful to its creator, who is no doubt playing God.
There are many beautiful quotes in the book, my favorite one:
Cavemen created the gods, I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same
The book is haunting and it made me highly uncertain of which way we will go as a species - in the end I choose to go outside and touch grass.