Sebastian Mallaby

From the New York Times bestselling author of More Money Than God comes the astonishingly frank and intimate story of Silicon Valley’s dominant venture-capital firms—and how their strategies and fates have shaped the path of innovation and the global economy Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives the VC business, all of Silicon Valley, the wider tech sector, and, by extension, the world. In The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby has parlayed unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time—the key figures at Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Chinese partnerships such as Qiming and Capital Today—into a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis that unfurls the history of tech incubation, in the Valley and ultimately worldwide. We learn the unvarnished truth, often for the first time, about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous disasters in Valley history, from the comedy of errors at the birth of Apple to the avalanche of venture money that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber. VCs’ relentless search for grand slams brews an obsession with the ideal of the lone entrepreneur-genius, and companies seen as potential “unicorns” are given intoxicating amounts of power, with sometimes disastrous results. On a more systemic level, the need to make outsized bets on unproven talent reinforces bias, with women and minorities still represented at woefully low levels. This does not just have social justice implications: as Mallaby relates, China’s homegrown VC sector, having learned at the Valley’s feet, is exploding and now has more women VC luminaries than America has ever had. Still, Silicon Valley VC remains the top incubator of business innovation anywhere—it is not where ideas come from so much as where they go to become the products and companies that create the future. By taking us so deeply into the VCs’ game, The Power Law helps us think about our own future through their eyes.

Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

The Power Law

Chronicles the evolution of hedge funds from their origins in the 1960s to their status in the recent economic crisis, discussing the contributions of key figures while offering insight into how they have weathered recent financial setbacks and are defining future trends. By the author of The World's Banker.

Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite

More Money Than God

"Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet"--Dust jacket flap.

The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan

The Man Who Knew

Provides a revealing look inside the workings of the World Bank and the realities of global development under the leadership of the colorful James Wolfensohn, examining the changing role of the World Bank in a new era of globalization and international terrorism. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations

The World's Banker

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence

The Infinity Machine

The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence

From one of our leading chroniclers of the intersection of innovation and capitalism, a landmark reckoning—based on unprecedented access—with one of the world’s most brilliant and driven tech visionaries, and his game-changing company Even by the standard of a tech industry stacked with so-called geniuses, Demis Hassabis is a special case. Born poor in North London to immigrant parents, a chess prodigy by age five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven figure offer before turning 18 to feed his insatiable scientific curiosity at Cambridge. Later, he added a neuroscience PhD to his computer science skills to pursue the dream of artificial general intelligence, the ultimate goal being to unravel the mysteries of biology and theoretical physics and to usher in super-abundance. Alongside a small group of fellow travelers, that is the path he is still on, leading the AI research at Google, winning a Nobel Prize along the way, and imagining machines that will compound, or possibly supplant, the human understanding of the universe. Hassabis has given Sebastian Mallaby a great deal of his time, sitting for over thirty hours of conversation. But Mallaby has also drawn from Hassabis's detractors, such as his estranged cofounder Mustafa Suleyman; from his rivals, such as OpenAI's leading scientist Ilya Sutskever; and from academic pioneers who now fear for human survival, such as Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton. The result is a revelatory account of a singular figure and his company and a profound reckoning with this protean field as it leaps from the periphery to the center of our consciousness. No one questions Hassabis’s brilliance. There are those who, like Elon Musk, have at times regarded him as an "evil genius." He is in a game where the stakes are matched only by the exorbitant costs — for talent, and for compute. Celebrated scientists pursue the technology because they cannot resist the sweetness of discovery. Others pursue it for money or power. The inventors believe they control their technology, but often, the technology controls them. Despite Hassabis’s pivotal role inside Google’s engine room, this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis deals with the Valley and takes its money, but remains outside and furiously critical of it, lambasting its leaders in conversation with Mallaby. The end of this race cannot be known, but as this great book shows us, Hassabis's quest to will a new form of cognition into the world is a defining story for our era.

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence

"From one of our leading chroniclers of the intersection of innovation and capitalism, a landmark reckoning - based on unprecedented access - with one of the world's most brilliant and driven tech visionaries and his game-changing company. Even by the standard of a tech industry stacked with so-called visionary leaders possessed of the godspark of genius, Demis Hassabis is universally recognized as a special case. Born poor in North London to immigrant parents, a dominant chess prodigy by age five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven figure offer before he turned 18 to feed his insatiable scientific curiosity at Cambridge. Later, he added a neuroscience PhD to his computer science skills to pursue the dream of artificial general intelligence, his ultimate goal to solve the world's hardest problems and usher in an era of super-abundance. And along with a small group of fellow travelers around the world, that is the path he is very much still on, winning a Nobel Prize along the way, and imagining machines that will unlock the deepest mysteries of the universe. Hassabis has given Sebastian Mallaby a great deal of his own time, sitting still for over thirty hours of probing conversations, and has opened up his company to him, allowing Mallaby to spend hundreds of hours talking to all its key players, including people still there, like Shane Legg, and those who've left, like Mustafa Suleyman. The result is a revelation-packed account of a singular figure and his company and a profound reckoning with this whole protean field in the crucial, indeed historic era, when it went from the periphery to the center of the world. No one questions Demis Hassabis's brilliance, commitment, or the worthiness of his ultimate goals. There are those who do flinch at the heat of his fire, and question some of his strategies. His competitors, of course, want to beat him. He is in a game at a moment where the sense of the stakes is matched only by the exorbitant costs - for talent, and for compute. Faustian bargains abound. Celebrated scientists pursue the technology because, like Robert Oppenheimer, they cannot resist the sweetness of discovery. Others pursue it for money or power. The inventors believe they control their technology, but often, the technology controls them. THE INFINITY MACHINE surfaces Hassabis's story's importance across a number of dimensions. Not least, crucially, this is not at heart a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis deals with the Valley and takes its money, but he has remained outside of it, and indeed, furiously critical of it, often lambasting its leaders in his conversations with Mallaby. DeepMind has never seen large language models as the one path to the AGI mountaintop. That left them blindsided by the OpenAI ChatGPT breakthrough, but it has also caused them to advance on a much broader front, and arguably have a bigger real world impact than their competitors. So far. The end of this race cannot be known, but as this great book shows us, the place of Demis Hassabis and DeepMind in the history of tech, capitalism, and science is secure"-- Provided by publisher.

A NEW YORK TIMES & SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Extraordinary... beautifully written, clear-eyed and engaged in the deepest ethical questions of our day' Rory Stewart 'Mallaby has done full justice to his kaleidoscopically interesting subject ... expertly structured and vividly reported, the book presents the most insightful portrait of Hassabis to date' Financial Times A revelatory portrait of the visionary behind Google DeepMind, the race to control the future – and what it means to win Even in a tech world crowded with visionary leaders, Demis Hassabis is recognized as a special case. Born to working class, immigrant parents in North London, a chess prodigy by five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven-figure job offer from a video-game studio to study science at Cambridge. Long before the current obsession with AI, he founded the path-breaking company DeepMind in order to pursue a single, audacious goal: the dream of artificial superintelligence, which would solve humanity’s hardest problems, change life and work as we know it, and perhaps even unlock the deepest mysteries of the Universe. For his scientific achievements, he won a Nobel Prize in 2024, and his company, now Google DeepMind, is considered the tech giant’s engine room. For the past three years, Sebastian Mallaby has had unprecedented access to Hassabis and DeepMind, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with him and his inner circle as well as detractors and rivals at other companies. The result is a revelation-packed portrait of a singular mind and a historic reckoning with the AI revolution, a shift potentially more significant than any since the dawn of complex thought 70,000 years ago. As Mallaby chronicles, DeepMind is locked in an arms race with Silicon Valley competitors to build artificial general intelligence, and thereby become the keeper of humanity’s future. Yet this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis has remained in Britain, and unlike his rivals, his aims are not wealth and power but scientific enlightenment. Like them, however, he is haunted by the memory of Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atom bomb. He aims to control the technology, but the technology may ultimately control him – and humanity writ large.

The infinity machine. Denis Hassabis, DeepMind e la gara per la superintelligenza

塞巴斯蒂安‧馬拉比

掌握Google大腦的諾貝爾獎得主 跳脫矽谷模式，打造超級智慧的無限機器 ★比人工智慧更「智慧」的終極發明 當科技巨頭大打AI戰時，哈薩比斯依然秉持「科學家」的使命，引領人類邁向前所未有的豐饒時代。 他手中掌握Google的AI技術命脈，心中牽掛如何打造出人類所能想像最強大的工具：通用人工智慧（AGI）。這會是一臺能在無窮無盡的資料之海縱橫馳騁的機器，應用範疇沒有極限，是解決所有問題的萬能解方。 ★從西洋棋神童到AI界的賈伯斯 即便從天才輩出的科技業人才標準來看，哈薩比斯仍是異數。他五歲就成為西洋棋神童，十七歲共同創作出熱銷百萬的電玩遊戲，隨後進入劍橋大學電腦科學系就讀，跨界取得神經科學博士學位。為了揭開生物學與物理學的奧祕，他與志同道合的夥伴創立DeepMind，要打造一種能夠像人類一樣思考、推理、學習的智慧機器。 為了得到更多算力支持，他接受Google的收購以加速研究進展。自此，他擁有改變的影響力，領導Google的人工智慧研究，以AlphaGO打敗世界棋王，催生能與ChatGPT一爭高下的Gemini，更以AlphaFold研究摘下諾貝爾化學獎桂冠。 ★採訪權限空前的卓越紀實 本書由兩度入圍普立茲獎的當代頂尖財經作家馬拉比，歷時三年、絕無僅有的三十小時促膝長談，深入剖析科技先驅德米斯‧哈薩比斯，額外採訪超過一百位相關重要人物，詳實記錄DeepMind這家足以顛覆世界的公司發展。隨著AI對人類影響愈來愈深，這將成為定義我們這個時代最重要的篇章。 【各界推薦】 才華洋溢的哈薩比斯與他共同創辦的DeepMind，為正在改變世界的人工智慧開闢新的道路。這本報導詳實、洞察入微的著作中，記錄了技術突破、安全爭議、解開蛋白質摺疊之謎的輝煌勝利，以及與OpenAI等競爭者的激烈角力。這不只是一個精彩故事，更是AI發展歷程的深刻解析。 ──華特‧艾薩克森（Walter Isaacson），《賈伯斯傳》與《馬斯克傳》作者 本書捕捉了這場高風險AI軍備競賽令人屏息的戲劇張力。作者講述哈薩比斯如何建立DeepMind、引爆AI革命，並重繪全球權力地圖。這是在機器智慧的最前線，人類野心與倫理規範激烈碰撞的精采紀實。 ──克里斯‧米勒（Chris Miller），紐時暢銷書《晶片戰爭》作者 本書生動描繪哈薩比斯的多個面向，也是DeepMind最具權威的記述──這無疑是AI時代影響最為深遠的收購案。馬拉比用全新的視角來看塑造這個實驗室的人物性格、內部的明爭暗鬥，以及與Google的激烈角力，讓我們看到這個教機器思考的組織如何形塑而成。 ──派翠克‧麥奇（Patrick McGee），紐時暢銷書《蘋果在中國》作者 作者的高明之處在於，透過哈薩比斯這位當代最重要的技術變革者來講述人工智慧的壯闊篇章。本書不僅讓你深入了解AI，也讓你看見人類的才智、遠見與百折不撓的毅力如何翻轉這個世界。 ──安德魯‧麥克費（Andrew McAfee），《第二次機器時代》共同作者 作者以其一貫的非凡文采，講述一個迷人的故事：一個流著新加坡華裔與希臘裔塞普勒斯血液的北倫敦青年，如何引領Google在AI競賽領先群雄，還在途中摘下諾貝爾獎的桂冠。 ──麥可‧莫里茨（Michael Moritz），紅杉資本董事長 作者簡介 塞巴斯蒂安‧馬拉比（Sebastian Mallaby） 著有多部廣受矚目的作品，其中包括暢銷書《富可敵國》（More Money Than God）及《矽谷創投啟示錄》。曾擔任《金融時報》特約編輯，兩度入圍普立茲獎，現為美國外交關係委員會（Council on Foreign Relations）專攻國際經濟領域的保羅‧沃爾克資深研究員（Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow）。 譯者簡介 廖月娟 美國西雅圖華盛頓大學比較文學碩士。曾獲誠品好讀報告2006年度最佳翻譯人、2007年金鼎獎最佳翻譯人獎、2008年吳大猷科普翻譯銀籤獎。譯作繁多，包括《賈伯斯傳》、《你要如何衡量你的人生？》、《旁觀者》、《謝謝你遲到了》等數十冊。 林俊宏 臺灣師範大學翻譯研究所博士。喜好電影、音樂、閱讀、閒晃，覺得把話講清楚比什麼都重要。譯有《人類大歷史》、《人類大命運》、《21世紀的21堂課》、《人類文明》、《大數據》、《大數據資本主義》、《如何讓人改變想法》等書。 黃瑜安 臺大翻譯碩士學位學程筆譯組畢，目前從事影視字幕、書籍等各類型的翻譯工作，譯有《我逃離的帝國》、《韓流憑什麼》、《不吵架也能贏的溝通術》、《經濟預測革命》等。

Gemini推手哈薩比斯的超級智慧長征

無限機器

Never has the World Bank's relief work been more important than in the last nine years, when crises as huge as AIDS and the emergence of terrorist sanctuaries have threatened the prosperity of billions. This journalistic masterpiece by Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby charts those controversial years at the Bank under the leadership of James Wolfensohn—the unstoppable power broker whose daring efforts to enlarge the planet's wealth in an age of globalization and terror were matched only by the force of his polarizing personality. Based on unprecedented access to its subject, this captivating tour through the messy reality of global development is that rare triumph—an emblematic story through which a gifted author has channeled the spirit of the age. This edition features a new afterword by the author that analyzes the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as Wolfensohn's successor at the World bank Read Sebastian Mallaby's new book, The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan.

The Africa correspondent for The Economist forecasts the effects of apartheid's dismantling in South Africa with predictions about the shape of the new government, reactions from the white minority, and economic growth. 12,500 first printing.

The Future of South Africa

After Apartheid

Looks inside the workings of the World Bank and global development under the leadership of James Wolfensohn, examining the role of the World Bank in a new era of globalization and international terrorism.

Sebastian Mallaby

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