Steven Sander

Editor, writer and filmmaker. Recently edited The A-Word: The Future of Aging, Don’t Be Prey and The Thinking Game. Emmy-winner for @30for30 #OfMiraclesAndMen.

[Steven Sander @stevesander]

“See this movie if you can: compelling, sometimes jaw-dropping but ultimately optimistic.”

[Will Hutton @williamnhutton]

See this movie if you can: compelling, sometimes jaw-dropping but ultimately optimistic. The extraordinary story of Demis Hassabis - a UK grown AI billionaire, but with values. The Thinking Game (2025) Official https://t.co/nrARb96HiA - Google Drive https://t.co/bNBOzZx0SF

[Steven Sander @stevesander]

@SteveHullfish Already have my copy. Congrats!

[Viraj Sheth @viraj_sheth]

very interesting watch on my flight back.

the thinking game - a documentary on demis hassabis.

recommend it to anyone curious about AGI.

[Steven Sander @stevesander]

Last chance to see Don’t Be Prey on the big screen in the UK. Screenings throughout the rest of March and April, including London’s Leicester Square. https://t.co/jxTnp3g5ri

[Ben Cohen @bzcohen]

The Thinking Game is nearing 300M views, so I called the guy who made it.

- He began as a weasel at NFL Films.
- He was asked: “If you could go back in time and film the Manhattan Project, how would you do it?”
- He had a code name for the Nobel: ABBA.

https://t.co/NmcW8KJ5ov

[Sabine Hossenfelder @skdh]

On New Year's Day, I watched "The Thinking Game", a documentary about Demis Hassabis from Deepmind (you find it on YouTube). It's very well done and I can really recommend it. I can't even complain about the music and I usually hate this.

Ok, I just watched it because of the London footage 😭

Be that as it may, he said something there that stuck in my head. Basically, if you try to solve a problem before its time has come, you might literally die trying. Not because the problem is unsolvable or because it isn't important, but because with the knowledge and the tools that you have, it's impossible.

I think this is exactly why physicists got stuck with their foundational research. A unified theory or a theory of everything: these are solvable problems, but they were not solvable with the knowledge and tools of the 1970s. And they are still not solvable today because the energy scales that we would have to reach to gather the necessary data are way beyond our current technological abilities.

You may say, but you won't know unless you try, and look it worked out for Demis and protein folding just fine. And yes, I agree, it was worth a try to find that final theory after the completion of the standard model. But after 20 years of failure, some time in the 1990s maybe, physicists should have realized it's not the right thing to go after at at this moment in time. They should have reconsidered, thought about what is the next possible step.

And while they wasted time on this fruitless enterprise, other things did not get done.

I hope that AGI, if it comes --- when it comes! ---, will be better at identifying the problems whose time has come so that we can resume building up our knowledge in the foundations of physics, step by step, rather than reaching for the sky, failing, and seeing an entire generation of the smartest people on the planet dying while trying.

I genuinely put a lot of hope in AI now, esp when it comes to quantum foundations.

PS: GPT Pro is still busy trying to solve the NSE Clay problem. It has made some progress, I think. Or maybe my brain has just rotted away.

PPS: I have some zombie chats that I can't terminate on the user end and that have racked up thousands of hours of thinking time. I dearly dearly hope this is a display problem 😬

[Philip Johnston @PhilipJohnston]

I’m a documentary nerd and ‘The Thinking Game’ is my new favourite documentary.

It has everything, fascinating subject matter, intriguing back story, underdog struggle, beautiful story telling, satisfying resolution… what more can you ask for!
@demishassabis

[Demis Hassabis @demishassabis]

‘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.🧬🚀

[Shane Legg @ShaneLegg]

Wow!!! After 3.5 weeks The Thinking Game has 100 million views on YouTube. My interview with Hannah Fry is at 850k views on YouTube after 8 days.

Plus the powerful Gemini 3 models, Nano Banana Pro, Veo, Antigravity... it's a very strong end to the year.

2026 is going to be 🚀

[Shane Legg @ShaneLegg]

The popularity of The Thinking Game has easily exceeded even my most optimist predictions: 43 million views after only 16 days — and that's just on YouTube.

Huge congrats to Greg Kohs, Gary Krieg and their team that spent many years interviewing us for the documentary material!

[Steven Sander @stevesander]

@netflix But you see, storytelling isn’t just about the entertainment.

[Liv Boeree @Liv_Boeree]

If you haven’t watched “The Thinking Game” yet, do it.

It’s a rare insight into legit genius, as it follows @demishassabis and @ShaneLegg from their earliest moments of prescience, through each of their world changing achievements (up to and including a Nobel).

They’re just really kind ppl too.

I stan ❤️

[Harry Wallop @hwallop]

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes about Tom Stoppard

[Kasper Saugmann @kaspers]

In just one week, more than 16 million people have watched the documentary “The Thinking Game” about Google’s AI division DeepMind.

It offers a fascinating look at the history of one of the most important players in the AI race, filmed over multiple years.

From the home-video-like clips where @demishassabis, CEO, in 2010 tells the first employees that the goal is to build “the world’s first general learning machine”; AGI, to the moment in 2024 when he and colleague John Jumper receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

We see how DeepMind started by trying to invent an AI that could win at the table-tennis-like game Pong, to eventually solving the “protein folding problem,” which can, among other things, accelerate the development of new medicines.

We hear how Hassabis, as a 12-year-old chess talent, wondered whether one could build a powerful system that combined people’s brainpower, a thought that leads him toward university, where he is accepted four years later, but asked to take a gap year first because of his young age.

He gets hired at a game development company, whose owner ends up offering him £1 million to stay, but as a colleague remembers Hassabis saying at the time:

“I want to be the person who solves AI,” and soon after he begins at the prestigious Cambridge University where, among others, Isaac Newton once studied, and where Hassabis meets people who still influence him today.

Hassabis recalls watching IBM’s chess computer Deep Blue defeat world champion Kasparov in 1997 as a university student.

“It was a huge achievement. But the truth of the matter was, Deep Blue could only play chess. What we would regard as intelligence was missing from that system. This idea of generality and also learning.”

The film also includes more critical or concerned voices, such as computer science professor Stuart Russell, who cautions that we can’t imagine the outputs of a superintelligent entity.

“It's like asking a gorilla to imagine what Einstein does when he produces the theory of relativity.”

[Shane Legg @ShaneLegg]

From the makers of the popular AlphaGo documentary, The Thinking Game gives a much broader picture of the story of DeepMind and our mission to build AGI, drawing on interviews with myself and others going back many years.

You can now freely watch it here: https://t.co/hCIicyWbLi

[Sriram Krishnan @sriramk]

had the pleasure of watching "The Thinking Game" over the weekend.

on one level, it is about @demishassabis and the path of AI over the last 20 years, especially around solving the protein folding problem.

On another level, it is about the act of multi-disciplinary science - experimentation, running into walls and persistence.

recommended watch.

[Google DeepMind @GoogleDeepMind]

To celebrate five years of #AlphaFold, we’re making The Thinking Game available on YouTube. 🧬

Get a candid look at the triumphs, the challenges and the pivotal moments that led to a breakthrough on a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology.

Stream for free on @YouTube → https://t.co/sZv7r2VpQh

[Demis Hassabis @demishassabis]

Read more about AlphaFold in our blog: https://t.co/Dj6dUNNbNv

Watch The Thinking Game on YouTube (a sort of sequel to the award-winning AlphaGo documentary - if you enjoyed that, you will enjoy this): https://t.co/lV3xPxKOV9

[Demis Hassabis @demishassabis]

Thrilled to celebrate 5 years of AlphaFold 2! It’s now been used by over 3 million researchers around the world to accelerate their vital research - and it was an honour of a lifetime for our work to be recognised last year with the Nobel Prize! Proof of AI’s potential to enable science at digital speed 🚀

To honour the anniversary, we’ve made The Thinking Game film available for free on our YouTube channel - it’s a great look behind the scenes of AlphaFold & our journey to AGI.

[Steven Sander @stevesander]

My own memory of Udo Kier was as a production runner. Between setups, on a bitterly cold London night, I sat with Udo in a car with the engine running. A little intimidated, it was a surreal experience as the great actor was not only portraying Hitler, but dressed in drag. RIP

[Variety @Variety]

Udo Kier, German Actor Who Appeared in 'My Own Private Idaho,' 'Andy Warhol's Frankenstein,' Dies at 81 https://t.co/XBFMlOhBJZ

[alan rusbridger @arusbridger]

The BBC’s in a mess, but it’s not the mess you think https://t.co/yYijjLd6NS