Rational Crazy Dream

The MANIAC

In 1933, as the Nazis came to power in Germany, Einstein's close friend, Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest, shot his son and then committed suicide. John von Neumann died in 1957. He had invented the first modern computer, established the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, participated in the development of the atomic bomb, and published "The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior." He foresaw the advent of digital life, self-replicating machines, artificial intelligence, and the technological singularity. In 2016, South Korean Go master Lee Sedol faced AlphaGo in five games, narrowly winning only one. This year has been dubbed the "Year of Artificial Intelligence."
"When We No Longer Understand the World" is a long masterpiece by Benjamin Labatrote, who restores the thrilling life of John von Neumann, a mathematician, game theorist, atomic bomb developer, and father of artificial intelligence, in high definition, and tells the ins and outs of artificial intelligence.
Rabatut, through the mouths of his characters, says: "If you know you're going to lose, then there's no point in continuing to play the endgame, right?"
Today, with artificial intelligence on the cusp of making every profession, from programmers to truck drivers, obsolete, the issue is more troubling than ever.
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Fascinating and unclassifiable, it's part historical fiction, part philosophical meditation... a dark, strange work of strange beauty.
—Becca Rotfeld, The Washington Post “Becca Rotfeld, The Washington Post” not only explains how cellular automata work but also transforms them into a symbol of von Neumann’s failure to respect the distinction between the game-like abstractions of mathematics and the complex seriousness of human life.
—Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic

2024-06-01

人民文学出版社

99 Readers

284

9787020186112