How a filmmaker captured the breakthroughs that reshaped biology — and produced one among YouTube’s most international hits
A quietly extraordinary documentary filmed behind the closed doorways of Google DeepMind has exploded into one among YouTube’s most-watched non-fiction releases, drawing a whole lot of thousands and thousands of viewers into the rarefied, high-stakes world of synthetic intelligence and the scientists making an attempt to decode the very nature of thought.
As reported by Ben Cohen in The Wall Road Journal, the movie — titled ‘The Pondering Sport’ — gives unprecedented entry to one of many world’s most influential AI laboratories and to its co-founder and chief government, Demis Hassabis, whose work helped ship a Nobel Prize in chemistry and reshape trendy organic analysis.
The documentary, directed by American filmmaker Greg Kohs, has surged in the direction of 300 million views since touchdown on YouTube late final 12 months, an astonishing determine for a movie centred on protein buildings, neural networks and long-term scientific ambition relatively than spectacle or superstar.
Its recognition is all of the extra hanging given the deeply technical subject material. But the movie’s emotional pull — Kohs’ trademark pursuit of cinematic “goosebumps” — seems to have reworked complicated analysis into gripping human drama.
The story traces again almost a decade, when Hassabis approached Kohs with a provocative problem: how would one doc a scientific turning level corresponding to the Manhattan Undertaking? On the time, synthetic intelligence was nonetheless largely confined to analysis circles, removed from the industrial frenzy it instructions as we speak.
Hassabis granted Kohs extraordinary entry to DeepMind’s inside workings, trusting the director’s intuition for capturing human emotion relatively than company messaging. Kohs’ background was unconventional for a know-how chronicler; he spent 10 adolescence at NFL Movies, the place he realized to construct cinematic narratives from rigidity, battle and triumph.
Working because the so-called “weasel cam” operator, Kohs scurried round stadiums trying to find emotional moments away from the sector — a coaching floor that later proved invaluable contained in the far much less seen theatre of scientific discovery.
His relationship with Google started by means of industrial work, nevertheless it quickly developed into one thing historic. DeepMind initially invited him to doc the event of AlphaGo, the AI system that shocked the world by defeating Go champion Lee Sedol. What started as archival recording turned the acclaimed 2017 documentary ‘AlphaGo’.
That movie cemented belief between Kohs and the lab, resulting in a stage of clearance hardly ever afforded to outsiders. He was given unrestricted entry to DeepMind’s London headquarters, together with safe areas hidden even from some employees.
From 2018 to 2024, Kohs and producer Gary Krieg embedded themselves amongst researchers tackling one among biology’s grand challenges: protein folding. The issue — predicting a protein’s three-dimensional form from its amino acid sequence — had stumped scientists for many years.
DeepMind’s resolution, AlphaFold, revolutionised the sector. By dramatically enhancing prediction accuracy, the system unlocked structural information for almost all identified proteins, accelerating drug discovery and basic organic analysis. The breakthrough in the end earned Hassabis and his collaborators a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Kohs captured the second of realisation that propelled the challenge from spectacular to historic. In a now extensively replayed scene, Hassabis casually suggests operating AlphaFold throughout each protein sequence in existence and releasing the outcomes overtly. The choice would democratise entry to organic information worldwide.
The movie’s emotional backbone is strengthened by archival footage from a 1986 BBC interview wherein a nine-year-old Hassabis, then a chess prodigy, describes chess merely as “a great considering sport” — a phrase that might later encourage the documentary’s title.
A lot of Kohs’ filming came about throughout Hassabis’ commutes and late-night hours at residence, usually between 10pm and 4am, alone with a digital camera and caffeine. The intimacy reveals a pushed, stressed thoughts balancing visionary ambition with relentless routine.
Regardless of Google funding the manufacturing and retaining copyright, the documentary resists the hole sheen of company promotion. Whereas undeniably flattering, it gives uncommon perception into the personalities, doubts and obsessions behind applied sciences now reshaping economies and societies.
Critics who label it promoting miss the purpose. The movie does what efficient journalism and documentary ought to: humanise complexity and illuminate processes sometimes hidden from public view.
Its timing additionally aligns with Google’s resurgence within the AI race. Alphabet’s market worth has soared over the previous 12 months, lately crossing the $4 trillion threshold, fuelled partly by advances showcased within the movie.
For viewers, the attraction lies not solely in technological marvels however in witnessing historical past unfold in actual time — the quiet conferences, unsure experiments and flashes of instinct that precede international transformation.
In the long run, Kohs achieved precisely what he got down to create: a scientific documentary that does not merely inform however unsettles, evokes and leaves audiences with the unmistakable chill of watching the longer term being written.
