When a documentary about an AI lab racks up 200 million views in less than a month, you know something interesting is happening. That's the milestone "The Thinking Game" just crossed, and it caught the attention of Ivanka Trump, who took to social media Monday to congratulate Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis on the achievement.
A Public Pat On The Back
On X, the former presidential adviser wrote, "An amazing documentary! Definitely worth watching. Congratulations @demishassabis," sharing Hassabis' own post celebrating the viewership numbers.
Hassabis had announced the news with characteristic enthusiasm: "'The Thinking Game' documentary has just passed 200M views on YouTube in just 4 weeks! Perfect holiday viewing if you're interested in a behind-the-scenes look at how an AGI lab works, or what goes into making a Nobel Prize-winning project like AlphaFold happen."
In a follow-up post, Hassabis praised the creative team behind the film, writing, "Amazing work from the incredibly talented Director Greg Kohs, Producers Gary Kreig & Jonathan Fildes, and a wonderful score from the maestro Dan Deacon."
Hassabis has since replied to Trump's post, thanking her for the endorsement. At the time of writing, the documentary has climbed to close to 217 million views on YouTube.
Inside Look At Breakthrough Science
Google made "The Thinking Game," a 2024 Tribeca Festival spotlight documentary about DeepMind, available to stream for free on its YouTube channel starting Nov. 25. The nearly 90-minute film, shot over five years, follows Hassabis and his researchers as they chase breakthroughs in artificial general intelligence and build AlphaFold, the AI system that cracked a 50-year problem in protein folding.
The documentary traces Hassabis' story from his childhood as a chess prodigy in London through his work in video games and neuroscience to co-founding DeepMind, now part of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) (GOOG).
From Chess Prodigy To Nobel Laureate
Born in 1976, Hassabis went on to share the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on AlphaFold2, which predicts the structures of known proteins and is widely used in drug discovery. That's the kind of breakthrough that sounds abstract until you realize it's accelerating how scientists develop new medicines.
Reviews have described the film as a rare inside look at a cutting-edge AI lab, while some critics, such as those at The Guardian, say it leans toward a corporate self-portrait. Either way, 200 million people in four weeks suggests the public appetite for understanding AI is very real.
The documentary's success comes as DeepMind continues to push boundaries in artificial intelligence research, with AlphaFold representing one of the most tangible applications of AI to real-world scientific problems. The system has been made freely available to researchers worldwide, democratizing access to protein structure predictions that once took years to determine.