In 2016, a program developed by Google’s DeepMind to play the ancient game of Go versus a human prodigy ranked second in the world and wins… convincingly. A few years later the prodigy retires lamenting “Even if I become the number one, there is an entity [AI] that cannot be defeated”. The eponymous documentary film, AlphaGo (Greg Kohs, 2017) chronicles the events surrounding these series of matches specifically following the team behind the AI as they endeavour to best champion player Lee Sedol and prove the power of their program.

AlphaGo itself is an AI system designed to mimic aspects of human cognition, specifically intuition a feat that had not yet been accomplished convincingly. Since the achievements of AlphaGo and its successor AlphaZero the field of AI research and development has seen greater interest and acceleration. For some this technology appears a threat for others an opportunity and as nations…