The Infinity Machine

From one of our leading chroniclers of the intersection of innovation and capitalism, a landmark reckoning--based on unprecedented access--with one of the world's most brilliant and driven tech visionaries, and his game-changing company Even by the standard of a tech industry stacked with so-called geniuses, Demis Hassabis is a special case. Born poor in North London to immigrant parents, a chess prodigy by age five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven figure offer before turning 18 to feed his insatiable scientific curiosity at Cambridge. Later, he added a neuroscience PhD to his computer science skills to pursue the dream of artificial general intelligence, the ultimate goal being to unravel the mysteries of biology and theoretical physics and to usher in super-abundance. Alongside a small group of fellow travelers, that is the path he is still on, leading the AI research at Google, winning a Nobel Prize along the way, and imagining machines that will compound, or possibly supplant, the human understanding of the universe. Hassabis has given Sebastian Mallaby a great deal of his time, sitting for over thirty hours of conversation. But Mallaby has also drawn from Hassabis's detractors, such as his estranged cofounder Mustafa Suleyman; from his rivals, such as OpenAI's leading scientist Ilya Sutskever; and from academic pioneers who now fear for human survival, such as Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton. The result is a revelatory account of a singular figure and his company and a profound reckoning with this protean field as it leaps from the periphery to the center of our consciousness. No one questions Hassabis's brilliance. There are those who, like Elon Musk, have at times regarded him as an "evil genius." He is in a game where the stakes are matched only by the exorbitant costs -- for talent, and for compute. Celebrated scientists pursue the technology because they cannot resist the sweetness of discovery. Others pursue it for money or power. The inventors believe they control their technology, but often, the technology controls them. Despite Hassabis's pivotal role inside Google's engine room, this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis deals with the Valley and takes its money, but remains outside and furiously critical of it, lambasting its leaders in conversation with Mallaby. The end of this race cannot be known, but as this great book shows us, Hassabis's quest to will a new form of cognition into the world is a defining story for our era.

From one of our leading chroniclers of the intersection of innovation and capitalism, a landmark reckoning--based on unprecedented access--with one of the world's most brilliant and driven tech visionaries, and his game-changing company Even by the standard of a tech industry stacked with so-called geniuses, Demis Hassabis is a special case. Born poor in North London to immigrant parents, a chess prodigy by age five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven figure offer before turning 18 to feed his insatiable scientific curiosity at Cambridge. Later, he added a neuroscience PhD to his computer science skills to pursue the dream of artificial general intelligence, the ultimate goal being to unravel the mysteries of biology and theoretical physics and to usher in super-abundance. Alongside a small group of fellow travelers, that is the path he is still on, leading the AI research at Google, winning a Nobel Prize along the way, and imagining machines that will compound, or possibly supplant, the human understanding of the universe. Hassabis has given Sebastian Mallaby a great deal of his time, sitting for over thirty hours of conversation. But Mallaby has also drawn from Hassabis's detractors, such as his estranged cofounder Mustafa Suleyman; from his rivals, such as OpenAI's leading scientist Ilya Sutskever; and from academic pioneers who now fear for human survival, such as Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton. The result is a revelatory account of a singular figure and his company and a profound reckoning with this protean field as it leaps from the periphery to the center of our consciousness. No one questions Hassabis's brilliance. There are those who, like Elon Musk, have at times regarded him as an "evil genius." He is in a game where the stakes are matched only by the exorbitant costs -- for talent, and for compute. Celebrated scientists pursue the technology because they cannot resist the sweetness of discovery. Others pursue it for money or power. The inventors believe they control their technology, but often, the technology controls them. Despite Hassabis's pivotal role inside Google's engine room, this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis deals with the Valley and takes its money, but remains outside and furiously critical of it, lambasting its leaders in conversation with Mallaby. The end of this race cannot be known, but as this great book shows us, Hassabis's quest to will a new form of cognition into the world is a defining story for our era.

A NEW YORK TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Extraordinary... beautifully written, clear-eyed and engaged in the deepest ethical questions of our day' Rory Stewart 'Mallaby has done full justice to his kaleidoscopically interesting subject ... expertly structured and vividly reported, the book presents the most insightful portrait of Hassabis to date' Financial Times A revelatory portrait of the visionary behind Google DeepMind, the race to control the future – and what it means to win Even in a tech world crowded with visionary leaders, Demis Hassabis is recognized as a special case. Born to working class, immigrant parents in North London, a chess prodigy by five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven-figure job offer from a video-game studio to study science at Cambridge. Long before the current obsession with AI, he founded the path-breaking company DeepMind in order to pursue a single, audacious goal: the dream of artificial superintelligence, which would solve humanity’s hardest problems, change life and work as we know it, and perhaps even unlock the deepest mysteries of the Universe. For his scientific achievements, he won a Nobel Prize in 2024, and his company, now Google DeepMind, is considered the tech giant’s engine room. For the past three years, Sebastian Mallaby has had unprecedented access to Hassabis and DeepMind, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with him and his inner circle as well as detractors and rivals at other companies. The result is a revelation-packed portrait of a singular mind and a historic reckoning with the AI revolution, a shift potentially more significant than any since the dawn of complex thought 70,000 years ago. As Mallaby chronicles, DeepMind is locked in an arms race with Silicon Valley competitors to build artificial general intelligence, and thereby become the keeper of humanity’s future. Yet this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis has remained in Britain, and unlike his rivals, his aims are not wealth and power but scientific enlightenment. Like them, however, he is haunted by the memory of Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atom bomb. He aims to control the technology, but the technology may ultimately control him – and humanity writ large.

A NEW YORK TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Extraordinary... beautifully written, clear-eyed and engaged in the deepest ethical questions of our day' Rory Stewart 'Mallaby has done full justice to his kaleidoscopically interesting subject ... expertly structured and vividly reported, the book presents the most insightful portrait of Hassabis to date' Financial Times A revelatory portrait of the visionary behind Google DeepMind, the race to control the future – and what it means to win Even in a tech world crowded with visionary leaders, Demis Hassabis is recognized as a special case. Born to working class, immigrant parents in North London, a chess prodigy by five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven-figure job offer from a video-game studio to study science at Cambridge. Long before the current obsession with AI, he founded the path-breaking company DeepMind in order to pursue a single, audacious goal: the dream of artificial superintelligence, which would solve humanity’s hardest problems, change life and work as we know it, and perhaps even unlock the deepest mysteries of the Universe. For his scientific achievements, he won a Nobel Prize in 2024, and his company, now Google DeepMind, is considered the tech giant’s engine room. For the past three years, Sebastian Mallaby has had unprecedented access to Hassabis and DeepMind, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with him and his inner circle as well as detractors and rivals at other companies. The result is a revelation-packed portrait of a singular mind and a historic reckoning with the AI revolution, a shift potentially more significant than any since the dawn of complex thought 70,000 years ago. As Mallaby chronicles, DeepMind is locked in an arms race with Silicon Valley competitors to build artificial general intelligence, and thereby become the keeper of humanity’s future. Yet this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis has remained in Britain, and unlike his rivals, his aims are not wealth and power but scientific enlightenment. Like them, however, he is haunted by the memory of Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atom bomb. He aims to control the technology, but the technology may ultimately control him – and humanity writ large.