The Thinking Game
The Thinking Game is a 2024 documentary directed by Greg Kohs. It follows Demis Hassabis and the Google DeepMind team as they tackle biology’s big puzzle—how proteins fold—using the AI AlphaFold. The film also looks at the broader goal of artificial general intelligence and how AI could speed scientific discovery.
Shot over five years at DeepMind’s London headquarters, the film tracks the development of AlphaFold, which predicts protein 3D structures. It builds toward DeepMind’s CASP14 achievement in 2020, solving a problem scientists had worked on for 50 years. The film frames this as part of a wider push to use AI in science and notes that Hassabis and John Jumper later received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024.
The Thinking Game premiered at Tribeca on June 7, 2024, and later screened at Vancouver and Tallinn film festivals. It had a limited UK release on March 21, 2025, and was released for free on YouTube on November 26, 2025, going viral with more than 200 million views in four weeks.
Critics praised its accessibility and breadth. The Guardian called it a fluent, approachable entry into AGI, though it sometimes felt like a corporate video. The Wall Street Journal noted its success on YouTube and broad appeal beyond tech audiences. Reviews also highlighted how the film humanizes the DeepMind team and shows real-world uses of AI.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 23:17 (CET).