Sebastian Mallaby’s New CFR Book Details the Rise of DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis 

“This is a book about intelligence,” writes Sebastian Mallaby, Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), in his new book, The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence. “On the one hand, it’s a portrait of a remarkable human, a chess prodigy, a Nobel laureate, a polymathic thinker. On the other hand, it tells the story of his quest to build remarkable machines: systems that are intuitive, creative, and even original.”

Through more than thirty hours of conversation with Hassabis, the cofounder and CEO of Google DeepMind, in addition to conversations with his professional rivals, academic mentors, business partners, and estranged cofounder, Mallaby provides exclusive insight into Hassabis’s character. The book is “a start‑up adventure story, an exploration of AI, but also an investigation of the motivations and passions that drive him.” 

Mallaby also explains what Hassabis has been working toward: machines that will compound, or possibly supplant, the human understanding of the universe. “The true reason to build artificial intelligence,” Hassabis recounts to Mallaby, “was to draw closer to what might be called God—to the intelligence that may presumably have designed everything around us.” 

Amid the rise of a powerful new technology, Mallaby notes that Hassabis, deeply committed to his personal principles, embodies the dilemma of the current era: “He wants to do good, but can he be good? He understands the dangers of AI, but what can he do to contain them? J. Robert Oppenheimer created the atom bomb, but he could not control its use. Perhaps this is the privilege and fate of all history’s great scientists.” 

As he chronicles the race to achieve modern AI, Mallaby provides a unique look into the technological advancements, safety challenges, and interpersonal conflicts that have led to where we are today. “In 2026, a new kind of intelligence is being willed into the world by a remarkably small number of people,” Mallaby writes. Demis Hassabis’s goal “is scientific enlightenment, not money or power.” 

“Sebastian’s exploration of the life and mind of Demis Hassabis could not come at a more critical time,” said CFR President Michael Froman. “This book is required reading for those who seek to understand the current wave of AI innovation, its technological and ethical limits, and the mind of an innovator at the frontier.”