The Thinking Game Film – Google DeepMind documentary

thinkinggamefilm.com

203 points by ChrisArchitect a day ago


mattlondon - an hour ago

What confused me about this documentary was the "at home" scenes for Hassabis.

He is famously a North London lad, but the at home shots are clearly shot from South London looking North (you can tell by the orientation of The Shard and Bishops Gate out of the window).

I thought that this might have been a "stage home" but it appears to be the same place in the background of various video conferences he is on too, so unless those were staged for the documentary (which seems like a lot of effort), then he lives near Crystal Palace and not Highgate?

incognito124 - a day ago

Watched it a while ago. Made me seriously think about AI and what we should use it for. I feel like all the entertainment use cases (image and video gen) are a complete waste.

someguy101010 - a day ago

reposting this from youtube comment

From 1:14:55-1:15:20, within the span of 25 seconds, the way Demis spoke about releasing all known sequences without a shred of doubt was so amazing to see. There wasn't a single second where he worried about the business side of it (profits, earnings, shareholders, investors) —he just knew it had to be open source for the betterment of the world. Gave me goosebumps. I watched that on repeat for more than 10 times.

ilaksh - a day ago

Greg Kohs and his team are brilliant. For example, the way it captured the emotional triumph of the AlphaFold achievement. And a lot of other things.

One of the smart choices was that it omitted a whole potential discussion about LLMs (VLMs) etc. and the fact that that part of the AI revolution was not invented in that group, and just showed them using/testing it.

One takeaway could be that you could be one of the world's most renowned AI geniuses and not invent the biggest breakthrough (like transformers). But also somewhat interesting is that even though he had been thinking about this for most of his life, the key technology (transformer-type architecture) was not invented until 2017. And they picked it up and adapted it within 3 years of it being invented.

Also I am wondering if John Jumper and/or other members of the should get a little bit more credit for adapting transformers into Evoformer.

nightski - a day ago

In my experience all DeepMind content ends up being a puff piece for Dennis Hassabis. It's like his personal marketing engine lol.

quirino - a day ago

Watched it this week. Pretty good.

There are a couple parts at the start and the end where a lady points her phone camera at stuff and asks an AI about what it sees. Must have been mind-blowing stuff when this section was recorded (2023), but now it's just the bare minimum people expect of their phones.

Crazy times we're living in.

dwroberts - a day ago

I want to watch it, but at the same time, it’s basically going to be an advert for Google. I’m not sure if I can put up with the uncritical fluff.

I would love to see a real (ie outsider) filmmaker do this - eg an updated ‘Lo and behold’ by Werner Herzog

jnwatson - a day ago

I caught it on the airplane a few days ago. I would have loved a little more technical depth, but I guess that's pretty much standard for a puff piece.

It is interesting that Hassabis has had the same goal for almost 20 years now. He has a decent chance of hitting it too.

stevenjgarner - a day ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d95J8yzvjbQ

sakesun - 12 hours ago

Is the multimodal agent really as good as shown in the documentary? If so, why did Google need to stage parts of the demo at Google I/O?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38559582#38566618

redbell - a day ago

Just watched it yesterday and enjoyed every second of it, the director put more focus on Demis Hassabis which turns out to be a true superhero and I have to confess that I am probably admiring him more that any other human in the tech industry.

dwarfpagent - a day ago

I find it funny that the YouTube link takes you to the film, but like an hour into it.

dwa3592 - a day ago

Loved this documentary. People complaining - WTFV first.

vismit2000 - 15 hours ago

Earlier on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086561

mskogly - 11 hours ago

Two thoughts: 1 the field of ai research moves so fast that any attempt to make a full documentary would we obsolete long before it was released. 2 all I want ai do to right now is to remove generic «dramatic» music from YouTube clips.

ChrisArchitect - a day ago

Streaming on YouTube now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d95J8yzvjbQ

beginnings - a day ago

i tried to watch it but like AI in general, it was extraordinarily boring. neural nets are really cool technically, but the whole AI thing is just getting old and I couldnt care less where its going

we can guarantee that whether its the birth of superintelligence or just a very powerful but fundamentally limited algorithm, it will not be used for the betterment of mankind, it will be exploited by the few at the top at the expense of the masses

because thats apparently who we are as a species

circadian - 19 hours ago

There's some funny comments going on in this thread. Understandably so. What could be more divisive an issue than AI on a silicon valley forum!?

As a brit, I found it to be a really great documentary about the fact that you can be idealistic and still make it. There are, for sure, numerous reasons to give Deepmind shit: Alphabet, potential arms usage, "we're doing research, we're not responsible". The Oppenheimer aspect is not to be lost, we all have to take responsibility for wielding technology.

I was more anti-Deepmind than pro before this, but the truth is as I get older it's nicer to see someone embodying the aspiration of wanton benevolence (for whatever reason) based on scientific reasoning, than to not. To keep it away from the US and acknowledge the benefits of spreading the proverbial "love" to the benefit of all (US included) shows a level of consideration that should not be under-acknowledged.

I like this documentary. Does AGI and the search for it scare me? Hell yes. So do killer mutant spiders descending on earth post nuclear holocaust. It's all about probabilities. To be honest: disease X freaks me out more than a superintelligence built by an organisation willing to donate the research to solve the problems of disease X. Google are assbiscuits, but Deepmind point in the right direction (I know more about their weather and climate forecasting efforts). This at least gave me reason to think some heart is involved...

ChrisArchitect - a day ago

Hard to discount the impact of AlphaFold in science work but submitting this to a number of film festivals like Tribeca seems a bit AI-washing.

DrierCycle - a day ago

AlphaFold is optimization, not thinking. Propaganda 'r us.