The full title is The Gods of Logic: Before and after artificial intelligence. Benjamín Labatut is one of my favourite living authors and I recommend both his books to pretty much anyone. The piece starts out talking about the Dune novels, and then uses a history of binary code and brain science to explain today’s approach to AI, the threats and opportunities that it presents.

It’s jaw-dropping stuff, and I read about this all the time. This piece is on par with his best writing:

We will never know how many died during the Butlerian Jihad. Was it millions? Billions? Trillions, perhaps? It was a fantastic rage, a great revolt that spread like wildfire, consuming everything in its path, a chaos that engulfed generations in an orgy of destruction lasting almost a hundred years. A war with a death toll so high that it left a permanent scar on humanity’s soul. But we will never know the names of those who fought and died in it, or the immense suffering and destruction it caused, because the Butlerian Jihad, abominable and devastating as it was, never happened.

If you’re new to him, this is an excellent place to start. His writing is grand but concise – there isn’t a wasted word. It’s from last month’s issue, but I just came to it now (via Kottke).

But we can be certain of one thing, since we have learned it, time and time again, from the punishing tales of our mythologies: it is never safe to call on the gods, or even come close to them.

It’s an exhilarating read that connects dots through culture, literature and history and has some real surprises in it. When talking about AI guru Jeffrey Hinton, this stopped me cold:

Hinton does not believe in God, and he would surely deny his ancestor’s claim that pain is an instrument of the Lord’s will, since he was forced to have every one of his meals on his knees, resting on a pillow like a monk praying at the altar, because of a back injury that caused him excruciating pain. 

It’s so good. Go read it. I’ve read both of Labatut’s books in the last 12 months, but I’m considering rereading them. Nobody writes like this guy.

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