AlphaGo

AlphaGo (2017) is a documentary by Greg Kohs that you can watch online on iFILM. It follows the 2016 showdown between DeepMind's program and Lee Sedol, the ninth-dan Korean grandmaster ranked among the best Go players alive.

Go is older than chess and holds more possible board positions than there are atoms in the universe, which is why machines struggled with it for decades. Demis Hassabis and his team taught a neural network to learn from human games and then from millions of matches against itself. The camera stays close to engineers David Silver and Aja Huang, and never leaves Lee Sedol as the weight of representing humanity settles onto his shoulders. The film's quiet peak isn't the algorithm winning — it's the famous Move 37 in game two, dismissed as a blunder before people called it beautiful. It treats the technology and the man losing to it with equal respect. Stream AlphaGo online on iFILM.