AlphaGo Netflix

A few days after writing last week's post, The Lineage of AlphaZero, I was looking to relax in front of the TV by watching Netflix, but what to watch? I started by browsing a list of recommended titles (or 'popular now' or something like that) and one of the first to appear was a documentary about AlphaZero's predecessor AlphaGo. Was that a coincidence or are the search engines also following me on TV? Whatever the reason, here's a Youtube trailer for the film.

AlphaGo Official Trailer (1:30) • 'Published on Sep 19, 2017'

The Youtube description says,

AlphaGo chronicles a journey from the halls of Cambridge, through the backstreets of Bordeaux, past the coding terminals of DeepMind, to Seoul, where a legendary Go master faces an unproven AI challenger. As the drama unfolds, questions emerge: What can artificial intelligence reveal about a 3000-year-old game? What will it teach us about humanity?

The documentary had only two stars out of five on Netflix, perhaps because it's at times somewhat tedious. The trailer shows many of the most exciting moments, but the full film was still worth watching. The 'legendary Go master' is Lee Sedol (or 'Se-dol Lee' as his name is sometimes written and which looks more Korean).

The film reminded me of the chess documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine by Vikram Jayanti, which chronicled Garry Kasparov's 1997 loss to IBM's Deep Blue. Many years ago on this blog, I featured the trailer for that film in A Milestone in Computer Chess History (May 2007).

When I was still in school, I learned how to play Go and played a few games with a friend. I understand a little about the game, but only a little. Extrapolating from my own experience with Go, I can easily imagine how casual players of chess react to the chess documentary.

Let's have some reference links. First, here are a couple of pages from sources who want us to like the movie:-

• AlphaGo (netflix.com)
• AlphaGo (alphagomovie.com)

And here are a couple of pages from sources who don't have a direct interest in the film, but want to know what we think:-

• AlphaGo - 2017 (imdb.com)
• AlphaGo - 2017 (rottentomatoes.com)

Finally, here are a couple of opinion pieces from a neutral source:-

• 2017-10-10: 'AlphaGo' documentary provides a rare look inside DeepMind (businessinsider.com)
• 2018-12-02: The documentary about Google DeepMind's 'AlphaGo' algorithm is now available on Netflix (ditto)

Since this a 'Chess' blog, not a 'Go' blog (unlike the word 'chess', the word 'go' has to be capitalized to distinguish the game), this is probably the last I have to say about the subject. Future time would be better spent understanding the technologies that drive the AlphaZero family.