The Chilean Benjamín Labatut resumes his interest in science with his new book, The MANIAC, a disturbing tripic that traces the path that goes from the fundamentals of mathmatics to the delusions of artificial intelligence. The book begins with the story of an Austrian physicist, Paul Ehrenfest, who killed his son who had Down syndrome before commiting suicide; it continues with the enigmatic figure of John von Neumann -a math prodigy considered by many as the most intelligent human being of the 20th century-; and ends with the confrontarion between an AI and the South Korean Go champion. The MANIAC is a novel about the limits of human comprehention, a work that invites us to question the origin and reach of human knowledge and the dark consequences of the progress of civilization. In conversation with Jorge Comensal.
