notes on “the infinity machine” by sebastian mallaby

I expected a book about artificial general intelligence. I got a book about a man who commits to protein structures the way some people commit to holy texts.

I had known Google’s AI Space for the solid and flattering synthesis into Podcasts. Now I realize that its Master (Demis Hassabis) runs the original AI lab on this blue planet and owns nothing as passionately as his intelligent vision (no pun intended). He bought his first computer with chess prize money at eight, and managed to escape the weirdness that you’d expect from early genius. He keeps insisting he isn’t really doing science but religion. *”Doing science is, sort of, like reading the mind of God. Understanding the deep mystery of the universe is my religion, kind of.”*

This is what my Youtube Algorithm, bleeding over with AI experts, is missing. People who are cut out to build the most powerful and general Thing ever are not running on normal orange juice. Their juice is not money. It’s the juice of metaphysical passion.

As a non-Linear Thinker and a bit watery Person I loved Hassabis’ Fluency Test. After his first Game company Elixir imploded under his own charm and a roomful of yes-men, Demis learned a trick. When you don’t know if a project is alive, don’t ask the team. Hold the Space and listen. If Ideas bubble with healthy viscosity there’s a path. If the room is silent, it’s dead.

I love it because it matches how Dreaming after a Bone Shattering Day works. You relax the Grinding Teeth and there is a Strict Non Judgment Policy for all the weird shit your Brain makes up while Sleeping. In Dream Science this is called Possibility Exploration. Hassabis runs DeepMind like a true Scientist: the Best Idea wins if it tickles Innovation forward an inch. He seems to be a true and pure Knowledge Worker.

Halfway in, Mallaby tells the story of the bet. Reinforcement Learning (how kids learn by bonbon and anger) versus Neural Networks (how a brain soaks in signals until a pattern leaks through). They converge around 2015, marvelling at how closely this mirrors the real tofu thing in our head. From here it looks inevitable. But it was an exhilarating read precisely because strikes of genius only look obvious in the past tense.

Demis is also a Game Designer, and his Breakthroughs were Systems trying to be the Best at a certain Game. That’s how he shocked the Mysticism surrounding the Go Playing Community. Chess is about logic and strategy. Go was meant to be about intuition and feeling. That’s also how he solved the hardest scientific problem of protein folding and won the Nobel Prize. Now all of Drug Development is using his Collection of finished Protein Origamis produced by AlphaFold.

AlphaGo (the BoardGame Thing) beat a Go champion. He felt grateful. Said the wall he’d been pressed against his whole career had just dissolved. AlphaGo wasn’t beating humans. It was showing them what they’d been missing. AlphaFold devoured protein researchers like Gym Bros devour Chicken and Rice. Whole science careers erased by the model in months. Same technology, two faces. Outrage and Disgust at the invalidation of human uniqueness, or open mouthed wonder at the new World of Creative Possibility opening up. Scientific Progress is essentially creative. That’s another takeaway from this book.

The move underneath all of it is decryption. The Stakes may be as high as when decrypting Enemy Messages in the Second World War. AlphaFold decrypts proteins. AlphaGo decrypted Humans’ Board Game Mystery. The Earth Species Project is decrypting the majestic clicking communication of whales and dolphins. I want to help decrypt the weirdness of dreams. The finger that points to the moon. The recipe to nourish the soul daily. AI as the edgy translator.

Hassabis is outward-directed and burning smokelessly with his mission clarity. I didn’t have it for the last dusty vagabonding years. That’s why I couldn’t put the book down and had more fun at work. He’s less obsessed with himself than with moral realism. The book suggests that he leads with reluctance and I believe it. Sorry for the fancy Term, but the Book is Meaning Making Medicine in times when you can’t think clearly because of the constant electromagnetic waves pulsing through our brain.