PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Matthew Lai

As of October 2026, Matthew Lai is a senior research engineer at Google DeepMind in London. In 2015 he completed an MSc at Imperial College London with Giraffe, a chess engine that teaches itself to play. He joined Google DeepMind in 2016, and in October 2017 he co-authored the Nature paper on AlphaGo Zero, a system that learns Go by playing against itself. He also co-authored AlphaZero, a self-play system for chess and shogi, with a preprint in December 2017 and a Science paper in 2018. In 2024 he co-authored Genie, a generative interactive environment that won a Best Paper award at ICML, and in 2025 he co-authored RoboBallet, a method for planning multirobot reaching.

Works
10
Citations
14,405
h-index
9

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2015

    Giraffe, a self-taught chess engine

    In 2015 he completes an MSc at Imperial College London with Giraffe, a chess engine that teaches itself to play.

  2. 2016

    Joining Google DeepMind

    He joins Google DeepMind in 2016, and the Giraffe project is discontinued.

  3. October 2017

    A Nature paper on AlphaGo Zero

    In a Nature paper published in October 2017, he co-authors AlphaGo Zero, a system that learns Go by playing against itself.

  4. 2017–2018

    AlphaZero for chess and shogi

    He co-authors AlphaZero, a self-play system for chess and shogi, with a preprint in December 2017 and a Science paper in 2018.

  5. 2024

    Genie wins an ICML best paper

    He co-authors Genie, a generative interactive environment trained from unlabelled Internet videos, which wins a Best Paper award at ICML 2024.

  6. 2025

    RoboBallet for multirobot reaching

    He co-authors RoboBallet, a method for planning multirobot reaching with graph neural networks and reinforcement learning, which appears in Science Robotics in 2025.

  7. As of October 2026

    Senior research engineer in London

    He is a senior research engineer at Google DeepMind in London.

Sources and credits

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  1. [1509.01549] Giraffe: Using Deep Reinforcement Learning to Play Chess arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Deep Learning Machine Teaches Itself Chess in 72 Hours, Plays at International Master Level | MIT Technology Review technologyreview.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. Matthew Lai - Chess Programming Wiki chessprogramming.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge | Nature nature.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. Matthew Lai matthewlai.ca. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. AlphaGo Zero: Starting from scratch — Google DeepMind deepmind.google. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. [1712.01815] Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  8. [2402.15391] Genie: Generative Interactive Environments arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  9. ICML 2024 Awards icml.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  10. RoboBallet: Planning for Multi-Robot Reaching with Graph Neural Networks and Reinforcement Learning — Google DeepMind deepmind.google. Checked 14 October 2026.