'Infinity Machine' is a biography of an Oppenheimer-like figure in AI

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2026

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Demis Hassabis says when he set up an AI lab in 2010, “no one believed in it.” The Google DeepMind co-founder and Nobel Prize winner is the subject of Infinity Machine, a new biography by Sebastian Mallaby. The book is a portrait of Hassabis, who Mallaby characterizes as a rare competitor across both science and business. In today’s episode, Mallaby speaks with NPR’s Steve Inskeep about Hassabis’ origins as a young chess player, his Einstein-level ambition, and parallels between Hassabis and Robert Oppenheimer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi all, it's Alyssa Ad Warning here, and this is NPR's book of the day.
0:07.0	It feels like everyone is obsessed with artificial intelligence.
0:11.0	Is AI taking over our jobs? Is it doing our homework?
0:14.2	Is it helping us write thank you notes, streamlining our businesses?
0:17.9	But wait, how did we get here?
0:23.6	A new biography of AI innovator Demis Hasabas takes us back to the beginning, seeing the world of AI through the story of one of its
0:29.1	early champions and creators. Its author, journalist Sebastian Malaby, tells NPR Stevensky
0:35.6	about his new book, The Infinity Machine.
0:39.6	We have a portrait of one of the brilliant minds whose ambition is to create an even more
0:44.7	brilliant mind. Demis Hasabas is a leader in artificial intelligence. He co-founded DeepMind,
0:51.7	the company that's now part of Google. In a corporate podcast, late last year, the British researcher recalled the years since he
0:58.2	started the company in 2010.
1:00.4	When we started Deep Mind, no one believed in it.
1:02.8	No one thought it was possible.
1:04.2	People were wondering what's Hay Life for anyway.
1:06.5	And then now, fast forward 10, 15 years.
1:09.5	And now, obviously, it seems to be the only thing people
1:11.7	talk about in business.
1:13.2	Hasabas himself is part of the reason. He shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AI-driven
1:18.5	research and biology. The journalist Sebastian Malaby has written a new biography of Hasabas.
1:24.3	It's called The Infinity Machine. The book describes Hasabas as a competitor determined to
1:30.4	win in both science and business. And that combination is pretty rare. If you look at Sam Altman,
	...

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