A new documentary, “The Thinking Game,” chronicles the high-stakes journey of Demis Hassabis and Google DeepMind as they attempt to solve the greatest puzzle of all: intelligence itself.
- A Five-Year Odyssey: Filmed by the award-winning team behind AlphaGo, this documentary offers an unprecedented, intimate look into Google DeepMind’s long-term mission to build Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
- From Games to Biology: The film traces the evolution of AI research, moving from mastering complex strategy games to the Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough of AlphaFold, which solved a 50-year-old biological grand challenge.
- Now Streaming for All: Following a successful festival run, The Thinking Game is now available for free on the Google DeepMind YouTube channel, democratizing access to this story of scientific discovery.
The Thinking Game is a new feature-length documentary that invites viewers inside the laboratories of Google DeepMind to witness the ambitious quest to create Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Filmed over five years by the award-winning team behind AlphaGo, the movie centers on neuroscientist and co-founder Demis Hassabis, exploring how his extraordinary beginnings shaped a lifelong pursuit of machines capable of flexible, human-level reasoning. Rather than following a traditional tech narrative of startup glamour, the film focuses on the intense intellectual and ethical rigor required to build systems that learn autonomously, capturing the team as they test ideas and confront the profound complexity of their work.
The narrative chronicles the rigorous process of scientific discovery, documenting the team’s evolution from mastering complex strategy games to tackling real-world scientific challenges. A major focus of the film is the dramatic journey to solve the “protein folding problem,” a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology. Cameras capture the pivotal highs and lows of this endeavor, culminating in the creation of AlphaFold—a breakthrough of such magnitude that it revolutionized biological research and went on to be awarded a Nobel Prize.
Following a successful world premiere at the Tribeca Festival and an international tour, the film has now been made accessible to a global audience. In celebration of the fifth anniversary of AlphaFold, Google DeepMind released The Thinking Game for free on their YouTube channel starting November 25. By making this story widely available, the creators offer everyone a front-row seat to witness the human story behind one of the most significant scientific pursuits of the modern era.