The Infinity Machine by Sebastian Mallaby review – the story of the man who changed the world
TL;DR
Sebastian Mallaby profiles DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis in 'The Infinity Machine' – from chess prodigy to Nobel Prize winner.
Key Points
- In March 2016, AlphaGo defeated world-class Go player Lee Se-dol in Seoul, a landmark moment in AI history.
- Go's vast decision space made it seemingly impossible for classical computing – DeepMind cracked it with deep reinforcement learning.
- Chess had fallen to machines in 1997 via DeepBlue, but Go was long considered out of reach until Hassabis' team proved otherwise.
- The book traces how one researcher and his team laid the groundwork for today's AI era.
Nauti's Take
It's good that someone is writing this history now – before mythology fully overtakes the facts. Mallaby is known for rigorous reporting, and Hassabis is no ordinary tech CEO shuffling buzzwords; he is a genuine scientist who played a long game.
That said, biographies of living, active AI leaders tend toward hagiography, so healthy scepticism is warranted. The really interesting question – whether DeepMind can preserve its scientific soul inside Google – is one a retrospective alone cannot answer.
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