The Infinity Machine

What Hacker News says

1. langfoSep 2026
   The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallaby

   I'm halfway through and is quite interesting and enjoyable. behind the scenes documentary view into his life, academic period, pre-DeepMind, forming DeepMind, raising capital, working on various projects like the Atari games, the AlphaGo period (currently immersed in). Definitely recommend

   https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/241434373-the-infinit...

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2. gibspauldingSep 2026
   I try to read fiction and non fiction in parallel, so my current pairing is How Asia Works by Joe Studwell and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Enjoying both so far!

   Other books I’ve enjoyed recently:

   The Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft - I read Endurance by Alfred Lansing last year so it was fun having a real Antarctic adventure in my mind while reading it.

   The Road by Cormac McCarthy - I actually started this a couple of years ago and quit part way through deciding I couldn’t put myself through it anymore. I kept thinking about it though, until I finally picked it back up and finished it this summer. Horrifying, but quite a masterpiece.

   If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky - I was about a year late to the party on this, but it still holds up. I would recommend it.

   The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Malaby - Excellent! Fascinating seeing a glimpse inside of the companies currently eating the world.

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3. ddfarmrJul 2026
   I recommend reading „The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence“ from Sebastian Mallaby. It offers a detailed glimpse into the reasons behind your observation regarding Google/DeepMind and the other frontier labs. best book I read so far on my current vacation.
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4. libraryofbabelApr 2026
   Is anyone else reading Sebastian Mallaby’s new book about Demis and Deepmind: The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence? It’s pretty good, and goes a lot into his background before Deepmind (chess kid, developing games at bullfrog, CS at Cambridge, bullfrog again, games startup…). He’s certainly an interesting guy, and as others are pointing out, more thoughtful and earnest than your average tech industry leader. One pleasant thing that comes across in the book is how he resisted the allure of moving to Silicon Valley and wanted to keep Deepmind in London, where he still lives.

   I hadn’t really appreciated before the connection between his chess and game industry experience and the early reinforcement learning work that put Deepmind on the map, e.g. the Atari game AI demos, AlphaGo, Alphazero, etc. There is a fascinating thread there and it’s certainly a case of the right person with the right mix of past experience and vision being able to pick exactly the right problems to focus on to move technology forward.

   The book has a few flaws: it’s maybe a little too uncritical of its subject. But that’s almost a given with books of this kind where the author gets a lot of access.

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