The documentary AlphaGo captures one of the most pivotal moments in the history of artificial intelligence, when AI beat a human at the ancient Chinese game of Go.Now, the same award-winning documentary team has a new film that explores the lab behind that breakthrough and its co-founder, Demis Hassabis, who has spent his entire life trying to “solve intelligence.”
The Thinking Game tells the story of DeepMind, Hassabis and their pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
I discussed the documentary with SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute founder and CEO Paul Roetzer on Episode 183 of The Artificial Intelligence Show. He believes it’s essential viewing for anyone trying to understand where this technology is going.
“It is so good,” says Roetzer.
The Man Who Wants to Solve Everything
The film centers on Hassabis and his extraordinary pursuit of AGI.
For years, Roetzer has used Hassabis’s definition of AI, “the science of making machines smart,” in his keynotes. Yet, when he polls audiences about who Hassabis is, few know him.
“And he's going to win multiple Nobel prizes,” Roetzer says. “He will probably be the most consequential person of our generation. And no one knows the guy.”
The Thinking Game traces how Hassabis’s early life shaped a singular, decades-long mission: to solve intelligence, and then use that intelligence to solve everything else.
Prioritizing Time Over Money
One of the most revealing moments in the documentary covers the sale of DeepMind to Google in 2014 for roughly $650 million.
In the context of today’s valuations, where startups such as Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence, can raise billions with no product, that price tag seems shockingly low. The film reveals that early investors, likely including Peter Thiel, did not want to sell.
So why did Hassabis do it?
Not for money. He wanted the support to speed up his timeline.
Hassabis calculated that access to Google’s infrastructure would accelerate his timeline by five years. To him, preserving five years of his own cognitive peak was worth more than holding out for more money.
“There's no time to waste,” says Roetzer.
The Pure Scientist
The documentary also captures the moment DeepMind cracked the code on protein folding with AlphaFold, a breakthrough that essentially solved a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology.
In the film, the team realizes they have solved a problem potentially worth trillions of dollars. When asked what to do with it, Hassabis doesn't hesitate to provide or open source their models to the public.
“He literally gave humanity these predictive models for protein folding, which advances medicine by probably decades,” Roetzer says.
Watch It
Even among prominent leaders shaping the future of AI, from Sam Altman to Mark Zuckerberg to Elon Musk, Hassabis stands out.
He represents a different kind of ambition. He isn't driven by money; he’s motivated to find ways for AI to genuinely benefit society.
“If you think about the people who are leading the charge, who do I actually want controlling this?” asks Roetzer. “For me, I want the pure scientist who is doing this because he believes intelligence solves everything else.”
The Thinking Game is available to watch for free on YouTube.
Mike Kaput
As Chief Content Officer, Mike Kaput uses content marketing, marketing strategy, and marketing technology to grow and scale traffic, leads, and revenue for Marketing AI Institute. Mike is the co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing and the Future of Business (Matt Holt Books, 2022). See Mike's full bio.