Is anyone else reading Sebastian Mallaby’s new book about Demis and Deepmind: The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence? It’s pretty good, and goes a lot into his background before Deepmind (chess kid, developing games at bullfrog, CS at Cambridge, bullfrog again, games startup…). He’s certainly an interesting guy, and as others are pointing out, more thoughtful and earnest than your average tech industry leader. One pleasant thing that comes across in the book is how he resisted the allure of moving to Silicon Valley and wanted to keep Deepmind in London, where he still lives.
I hadn’t really appreciated before the connection between his chess and game industry experience and the early reinforcement learning work that put Deepmind on the map, e.g. the Atari game AI demos, AlphaGo, Alphazero, etc. There is a fascinating thread there and it’s certainly a case of the right person with the right mix of past experience and vision being able to pick exactly the right problems to focus on to move technology forward.
The book has a few flaws: it’s maybe a little too uncritical of its subject. But that’s almost a given with books of this kind where the author gets a lot of access.
Bro, are we reading the same book? The book is totally uncritical of the subject and paints him like the second coming of christ. It feels like GDM wanted a canonization of Hassabis, and the writer simply obliged. Also, how does everything that GDM did keep coming back to some vague ideas in the guy's thesis? He is a great leader, no doubt, but him winning the Nobel Prize was just a huge joke.
Out of all the heads of AI orgs out there, Dennis is the best, but the book did him a disservice by painting an unrealistically sunny picture of him as some kind of visionary figure.
How would someone with an intellect like Demis Hassabis think?
I want to learn to think more like him. What differences between his way of thinking and mine create such a powerful gap? If I could understand those differences, I might also understand how to narrow that gap. And if we could identify the causes of that gap, perhaps humans in general could develop much further.
I truly envy his intelligence. When I read his writings, I can see fragments of knowledge that he cannot hide, and it makes me think: I want to become like that too.
Well I feel the same way about Kim Kardasian. So I get what you are saying about the gap and finding ways to shrink it cause I want to become like that too.
People doing frontier research in knowledge representation & reasoning are worrying that soon, with the merging of LLM and knowledge graphs, automated 'everything' from research to production, will be possible. This implies that 'human cleverness' will get you nowhere any more and the only limits will then be computation - a resource Big Tech is hard at work completely walling normal people out of.
There's really a few people leading the AI charge that I think would actually embody the kind of character needed for such a role than Demis. I don't know if he's fooling the public and deeply inside represents a person more aligned with Altman; but I'm really happy he's at the top with the public information I've seen/read about him. I'm hoping Google wins the race and builds a moat so that the other more nefarious leaders get dumpstered.
He was even bouncing around as a teenager at Bullfrog back in their glory days, and the noise around him then was that he was clearly going to go on to great things.
I don't agree with everything he says, but he's obviously an enormously deeper thinker than the likes of Altman.
I want to know about the political infighting between the TPU team, Google Brain team and DeepMind. And the famous tweet of Nando De Freitas on DeepSeek
Honestly, Hassabis and Amodei are the 2 last beacon of hopes for me in the AI race. What they have for them is that they both are scientists and not 'business-bros'. But are they genuine? Will they not be corrupted by power or pressure from shareholders?
The main problem is that in capitalism private companies have only the mission to serve their shareholders/owners.
Public institutions have the mission to serve the public.
The only real solution is to make AI a public good/utility which should be regulated on an international level and overseen by trustworthy institutions.
I agree with your feeling about Hassabis, but Dario gives me the creeps. YMMV of course. But I always have to think about him, grinning like a smurf at the WEF in Davos , telling everyone that their jobs will inevitably be eliminated by a machine of his creation. But that he is team human of course and deeply concerned (hahaha). In some weird sense, I even like Altman more.
You prefer Altman -- someone who will lie and cheat and backstab and work on autonomous military drones and video generators and adult chatbots, give his entire life and being, in order to amass as much power and influence as he can -- because you don't like Dario's smile?
I don't know any of them personally, so its all based on feelings anyway, created by internet consumption and the opinion of others. So who am I to judge anyway?
However, I have a weird feeling about Dario and every time I see his interviews, I get the creeps and he begins to really annoy me. And yes. His smurfy smile is certainly a factor, yes.
Is anyone else reading Sebastian Mallaby’s new book about Demis and Deepmind: The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence? It’s pretty good, and goes a lot into his background before Deepmind (chess kid, developing games at bullfrog, CS at Cambridge, bullfrog again, games startup…). He’s certainly an interesting guy, and as others are pointing out, more thoughtful and earnest than your average tech industry leader. One pleasant thing that comes across in the book is how he resisted the allure of moving to Silicon Valley and wanted to keep Deepmind in London, where he still lives.
I hadn’t really appreciated before the connection between his chess and game industry experience and the early reinforcement learning work that put Deepmind on the map, e.g. the Atari game AI demos, AlphaGo, Alphazero, etc. There is a fascinating thread there and it’s certainly a case of the right person with the right mix of past experience and vision being able to pick exactly the right problems to focus on to move technology forward.
The book has a few flaws: it’s maybe a little too uncritical of its subject. But that’s almost a given with books of this kind where the author gets a lot of access.
Bro, are we reading the same book? The book is totally uncritical of the subject and paints him like the second coming of christ. It feels like GDM wanted a canonization of Hassabis, and the writer simply obliged. Also, how does everything that GDM did keep coming back to some vague ideas in the guy's thesis? He is a great leader, no doubt, but him winning the Nobel Prize was just a huge joke.
Out of all the heads of AI orgs out there, Dennis is the best, but the book did him a disservice by painting an unrealistically sunny picture of him as some kind of visionary figure.
How would someone with an intellect like Demis Hassabis think?
I want to learn to think more like him. What differences between his way of thinking and mine create such a powerful gap? If I could understand those differences, I might also understand how to narrow that gap. And if we could identify the causes of that gap, perhaps humans in general could develop much further.
I truly envy his intelligence. When I read his writings, I can see fragments of knowledge that he cannot hide, and it makes me think: I want to become like that too.
Well I feel the same way about Kim Kardasian. So I get what you are saying about the gap and finding ways to shrink it cause I want to become like that too.
If you manage to get an ass as big as Kim Kardashian’s, then I suppose I’ll be able to get an intellect like Demis Hassabis’s.
So please, I’m begging you: could you eat five meals a day? Then maybe I can still have some hope.
People doing frontier research in knowledge representation & reasoning are worrying that soon, with the merging of LLM and knowledge graphs, automated 'everything' from research to production, will be possible. This implies that 'human cleverness' will get you nowhere any more and the only limits will then be computation - a resource Big Tech is hard at work completely walling normal people out of.
They're worried about the next step, when we haven't quite digested the current step?
Always. Rushing is the chief sacrament in the religion of speed. Get there before the other guy or get got.
There's really a few people leading the AI charge that I think would actually embody the kind of character needed for such a role than Demis. I don't know if he's fooling the public and deeply inside represents a person more aligned with Altman; but I'm really happy he's at the top with the public information I've seen/read about him. I'm hoping Google wins the race and builds a moat so that the other more nefarious leaders get dumpstered.
He was even bouncing around as a teenager at Bullfrog back in their glory days, and the noise around him then was that he was clearly going to go on to great things.
I don't agree with everything he says, but he's obviously an enormously deeper thinker than the likes of Altman.
One of my coworkers on Battle.net at Blizzard previously was at Bullfrog when Demis was there, and had only good things to say about him.
I was at Lionhead for a while and he was very highly regarded even among wizards like Alex Evans.
Yes let’s root for Alphabet controlling even more things!
I want to know about the political infighting between the TPU team, Google Brain team and DeepMind. And the famous tweet of Nando De Freitas on DeepSeek
Honestly, Hassabis and Amodei are the 2 last beacon of hopes for me in the AI race. What they have for them is that they both are scientists and not 'business-bros'. But are they genuine? Will they not be corrupted by power or pressure from shareholders?
The main problem is that in capitalism private companies have only the mission to serve their shareholders/owners.
Public institutions have the mission to serve the public.
The only real solution is to make AI a public good/utility which should be regulated on an international level and overseen by trustworthy institutions.
I agree with your feeling about Hassabis, but Dario gives me the creeps. YMMV of course. But I always have to think about him, grinning like a smurf at the WEF in Davos , telling everyone that their jobs will inevitably be eliminated by a machine of his creation. But that he is team human of course and deeply concerned (hahaha). In some weird sense, I even like Altman more.
You prefer Altman -- someone who will lie and cheat and backstab and work on autonomous military drones and video generators and adult chatbots, give his entire life and being, in order to amass as much power and influence as he can -- because you don't like Dario's smile?
I don't know any of them personally, so its all based on feelings anyway, created by internet consumption and the opinion of others. So who am I to judge anyway? However, I have a weird feeling about Dario and every time I see his interviews, I get the creeps and he begins to really annoy me. And yes. His smurfy smile is certainly a factor, yes.
Bro has made enough money. He should just retire already.
as if that's the goal.