Surely a great achievement. Although I feel a little bad for the team. I assume Silver didn't write all the code or design the entire algorithm single-handedly. But the recognition and the reward accrues to him alone. Ah, unjust hierarchical society.
I guess the other members of the team are being compensated well enough at DeepMind that $250k would be more icing than cake, but it still feels weird to see that Silver is the only person named in the article when a number of other world class researchers worked with him on this problem.
He's been working on Go for a very long time. Since he was a PhD student. Though I am sure the team helped, don't think he wasn't the main driving influence behind the algorithms and featurization of the problem.
Also, he's written an incredible series of groundbreaking papers throughout his career, going back to 2005. His papers tend to hold up very well. At this point, I carefully read any paper with his name on it, and I believe he very much deserves the honor.
I guess the other members of the team are being compensated well enough at DeepMind that $250k would be more icing than cake, but it still feels weird to see that Silver is the only person named in the article when a number of other world class researchers worked with him on this problem.