The MANIAC

The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut

Is this fact or fiction? In the world of AI, does it even matter? This is a novel about the history of AI that is mostly based on fact. The author started with a bunch of facts, then embellished the detailed of how they happened. There are many internal details that read like a tell-all documentary. There is a great deal of artistic license taking in these part, most of the purpose of making John von Neumann look bad. 

The book spends the bulk of the time in a middle section on the life of von Neumann. The start is short bit about a friend of Einstein. The end covers modern AI, including alphaGo and the Go player that it defeated. (The AI did lose one round when the human played a move that it didn't crasp, causing it to fall into a loop of bad moves.) 

The book has a gothic feel, implying that AI may be the dark abyss that we are falling into. Did von Neumann make a deal with the devil to set us on this path?