Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and widely known as "the father of AlphaGo," will visit Korea this week. During his visit, he will hold a special dialogue with Lee Sedol, a 9-dan Go player and distinguished professor at UNIST who played against AlphaGo 10 years ago.
According to the information and communications technology (ICT) industry on the 26th, Hassabis will attend the "Google for Korea 2026" event to be held in Seoul on the 29th. At the event, he will hold a dialogue with Lee Sedol under the theme "10 Years of AlphaGo: A Vision of AI for Everyone." Writer Cho Seung-yeon will also join the conversation.
At the event's opening, Google Korea President Yoon Koo is scheduled to give a presentation on the theme "Seoul Again: AI Innovation Google and Korea Will Build Together."
"Google for Korea 2026" was planned to revisit how AI technology has moved beyond the research stage to spread across industries and daily life since the emergence of AlphaGo. Hassabis's public visit to Korea marks the first since the match between Lee and AlphaGo in March 2016.
AlphaGo, the Go-playing AI developed under Hassabis's leadership, defeated Lee, then one of the world's top Go players, 4-1, announcing the arrival of the AI era to the world. Watching his creation compete in person, Hassabis remarked after AlphaGo's first victory against Lee, "We have landed on the moon," hailing it as another technological triumph for humanity.
