The inside story of DeepMind

"The first is The Thinking Game (free on YouTube) - a five-year portrait of Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind. On one level, it's a fascinating account of how a small group of researchers pushed the limits of artificial intelligence and produced genuine breakthroughs. Beneath the surface, the film is really about long-term thinking. AI can feel like it appeared out of nowhere sometime around 2022. This documentary shows how misleading that impression is."

"When DeepMind's breakthroughs finally arrive, they are the result of a few individuals who refused to abandon a problem that had defeated scientists for half a century. My view is that the approach to building technology, which is embodied by move fast and break things, is exactly what we should not be doing. Because you can't afford to break things and then fix them afterwards."

"The second documentary that I recently enjoyed was Turn Every Page (available on Amazon Prime), a story about the creative relationship between Robert Caro (author of The Power Broker) and his long-time editor, Robert Gottlieb. Like The Thinking Game, the film operates on multiple levels. On the surface, it chronicles a complex, sometimes fraught, 50-year partnership between two men devoted to telling great works of nonfiction."

Two feature-length documentaries illustrate the power of persistent, careful effort. A five-year portrait of Demis Hassabis and DeepMind traces years of false starts, doubt, and incremental advances that culminated in major AI breakthroughs driven by researchers who stayed the course. A film about Robert Caro and editor Robert Gottlieb follows a complex, sometimes fraught fifty-year creative partnership rooted in meticulous editorial craftsmanship and commitment to nonfiction. Both films emphasize long-term thinking, disciplined processes, and collaborative dedication as prerequisites for transformative achievement, and contrast those approaches with rapid, break-first development philosophies.

Read at Big Think