Seoul, March 2016. Two players sit hunched over a 19x19 grid covered in a sea of black and white stones. They are playing the ancient game of Go - a game of unimaginable complexity long thought impossible for a machine to master. On one side is Lee Sedol (Sae Dol), a legendary 18-time Go world champion. On the other, AlphaGo, a neural network based AI system built on a powerful technique called reinforcement learning. In the blink of an eye, the world changed. Exactly one decade later, we look back at the match that sparked the modern AI revolution. From algorithmic discovery to the solving of scientific grand challenges like protein folding, the foundation was laid right there on that wooden board.

Join Hannah Fry, Pushmeet Kohli (VP, Science) and Thore Graepel (AlphaGo team & Distinguished Research Scientist) as they unpick the legacy of AlphaGo.

🎥 AlphaGo https://youtu.be/WXuK6gekU1Y

🎥 The Thinking Game: https://youtu.be/d95J8yzvjbQ

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Thanks for joining us this year.

🔔 Subscribe to stay updated on our return in 2026, and revisit our episode library to catch up on everything from driverless cars to drug discovery: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqYmG7hTraZBiUr6_Qf8YTS2Oqy3OGZEj

Please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts if you enjoyed this episode. We always want to hear from our audience whether that's in the form of feedback, new idea or a guest recommendation!

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Further reading

Levels of AGI paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.02462

The road to AGI (Google DeepMind Podcast, S2): https://youtu.be/Uy4OYU7PQYA

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:

• Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry
• Series Producer: Dan Hardoon
• Editor: Rami Tzabar
• Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif
• Music composition: Eleni Shaw
• Audio engineer: Richard Courtice

Please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts if you enjoyed this episode. We always want to hear from our audience whether that's in the form of feedback, new idea or a guest recommendation!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.