#870: Sebastian Mallaby, Biographer of Demis Hassabis — Lessons from 100+ AI Insiders on The Race to Superintelligence, The Religion of AI, and Spotting Breakthroughs Early

The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig

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4.6 • 17.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2026

⏱️ 107 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the author of six books, including More Money Than God, The Power Law, The Man Who Knew, and The World's Banker. His latest book is The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, boy.
0:02.0	Hello, boys and girls.
0:03.6	Ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss.
0:05.7	Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show,
0:08.2	where it is my job to re-record my intro seven million times every time I do an episode.
0:12.5	Just kidding.
0:13.0	It's my job to interview world-class performers and the people who study world-class performers.
0:17.8	My guest today is one of my favorite nonfiction, author's Sebastian Malaby.
0:22.6	He is the Paul A. Volker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign
0:28.2	Relations, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the author of six books, including More
0:33.4	Money Than God, Love It, the Power Law, Love Love it. The man who knew and the world's banker.
0:39.0	I've not read the latter two.
0:41.0	Previously a columnist at the Washington Post and the economist.
0:43.9	Sebastian now co-hosts the CFR podcast.
0:46.8	CFR is Council on Foreign Relations podcast.
0:48.8	The Spillover, which examines the ripple effects of global events across policy, geopolitics,
0:53.9	economics, finance, and technology.
0:55.8	His latest book is The Infinity Machine, Demis, Hasabas, Deep Mind, and the Quest for Super Intelligence.
1:03.3	And in this conversation, we get into a lot. We get into his op-eds, different predictions, I would hesitate to call them, observations of the AI ecosystem,
1:14.3	how we actually timed it to get started before the launch of GPT 3.5, and much more. You can find
1:22.8	Sebastian on X at SC Malaby, so that's SCM-A-L-L-A-B-Y.
1:31.1	And you can find them on social very, very easily.
	...

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