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DeepMind chief reunites with baduk champion 10 years after historic match

Published: 29 Apr. 2026, 16:10

Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, left, shakes hands with legendary Korean Go player Lee Sedol at an event held in Seoul on April 29. [YONHAP]

Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of Google DeepMind, reunited Wednesday with legendary Korean Go player Lee Sedol, who went up against the company's AlphaGo AI in a legendary human-versus-machine match 10 years ago.

“It's great to be back here, kind of the center of where it all started” Hassabis said at the event held by Google in central Seoul, saying that the historic five-game Go match, called baduk in Korean, “signaled the beginning of these incredible advances that happened in the last decade.”

When asked about the Lee-AlphaGo match in 2016, the Google executive pointed to the AI's move 37 as the “most incredible moment” which demonstrated that AI can show creativity.

During game two of the 2016 match, AlphaGo made an unconventional shoulder hit on the fifth line for its 37th move, widely considered a pivotal move that secured its victory against Lee.

Such AI creativity can usher in a new “renaissance” of humans flourishing in science, he said, as it did in helping him solve the 50-year-old “protein folding problem,” which led to a Nobel Prize in 2024.

“I think we could maybe even like solve all diseases in the next 10 to 20 years. We can use these technologies to help the environment and new energy sources,” he said.

The father of AlphaGo also spoke highly of Korea's potential to become one of the leaders in the AI sector.

“It's amazing at manufacturing, from chips to robotics, incredible strength in industry, fantastic universities and research institutes,” he said. “So I think [Korea] has all of the ingredients to be one of the world leaders in this technology.”

Hassabis, who has been in Seoul since Monday, has met with President Lee Jae Myung and signed a memorandum of understanding with the science ministry technology partnerships program.

The executive is also said to have held separate meetings with the chiefs of local conglomerates, including LG Group and Hyundai Motor Group.

Yonhap