We need to stop worrying and love AI. That’s the underlying message of this gripping, emotional documentary, which gets us thinking, about thinking, in a whole new way.
AlphaGo is a self-improving computer program, designed to play the ancient Chinese board game Go. It was developed by a London-based company, DeepMind. The latter’s co-founder, Demis Hassabis, explains that he and his colleagues used “neural networks” to get the job done. What are neural networks? I have no idea. But the team’s delight in their creation is something any idiot can understand.
Like helicopter parents, they fret about AlphaGo doing something “embarrassing”. Hilariously, they point out that it can get “delusional”. AlphaGo’s first challenge is to take on European Go champion, Fan Hui. (It ain’t much of a contest). Fascinatingly, Fan Hui becomes involved in building up AlphaGo’s strength, so the program is in the best possible shape to take on “creative” world champion Lee Sedol.
Here’s the existential bit. Neither Hassabis nor Fan Hui could beat Sedol at Go. Yet, via AlphaGo, they’re in with a chance. As one of the DeepMind team points out, AlphaGo is all about human endeavour (“we created the data, we created the search algorithms”). The contest we eventually watch, in Seoul, is a battle of wits between Sedol and a machine. But it’s also a battle between Sedol and the men who made that machine. Either way, it’s flipping tense. Director Greg Kohs plants his camera practically on top of Sedol, (we see the champ’s fingers twitching with distress when AlphaGo wins the first of their five matches). I won’t tell you what happens next. But there are SO many tears.
Kohs’ offering has much in common with recent doc The Farthest, about the smart and lovely team behind the Voyager probes. Pop culture is obsessed with the kind of scientists who spawn monsters. AlphaGo, like The Farthest, introduces us to real-life pioneers and makes us feel 99.9 per cent certain our future’s safe in their hands.
