DeepMind: The Podcast

Hannah wraps up the series by meeting DeepMind co-founder and CEO, Demis Hassabis. In an extended interview, Demis describes why he believes AGI is possible, how we can get there, and the problems he hopes it will solve. Along the way, he highlights the important role of consciousness and why he’s so optimistic that AI can help solve many of the world’s major challenges. As a final note, Demis shares the story of a personal meeting with Stephen Hawking to discuss the future of AI and discloses Hawking’s parting message. For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com. Interviewee: Deepmind co-founder and CEO, Demis Hassabis CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic composition: Eleni ShawSound Engineer: Nigel AppletonEditor: David PrestCommissioned by DeepMind Thank you to everyone who made this season possible! Further reading:DeepMind, The Podcast: https://deepmind.com/blog/

AI needs to benefit everyone, not just those who build it. But fulfilling this promise requires careful thought before new technologies are built and released into the world. In this episode, Hannah delves into some of the most pressing and difficult ethical and social questions surrounding AI today. She explores complex issues like racial and gender bias and the misuse of AI technologies, and hears why diversity and representation is vital for building technology that works for all. For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com.  Interviewees: DeepMind’s Sasha Brown, William Isaac, Shakir Mohamed, Kevin Mckee & Obum Ekeke CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic composition: Eleni ShawSound Engineer: Nigel AppletonEditor: David PrestCommissioned by DeepMind Thank you to everyone who made this season possible!  Further reading: What a machine learning tool that turns Ob

AI doesn’t just exist in the lab, it’s already solving a range of problems in the real world. In this episode, Hannah encounters a realistic recreation of her voice by WaveNet, the voice synthesising system that powers the Google Assistant and helps people with speech difficulties and illnesses regain their voices. Hannah also discovers how ‘deepfake’ technology can be used to improve weather forecasting and how DeepMind researchers are collaborating with Liverpool Football Club, aiming to take sports to the next level. For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com.  Interviewees: DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, Raia Hadsell, Karl Tuyls, Zach Gleicher & Jackson Broshear; Niall Robinson of the UK Met Office CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic composition: Eleni ShawSound Engineer: Nigel AppletonEditor: David PrestCommissioned by DeepMind Thank you to everyone who made th

Step inside DeepMind's laboratories and you'll find researchers studying DNA to understand the mysteries of life, seeking new ways to use nuclear energy, or putting AI to the test in mind-bending areas of maths. In this episode, Hannah meets Pushmeet Kholi, the head of science at DeepMind, to understand how AI is accelerating scientific progress. Listeners also join Hannah on a [virtual] safari in the Serengeti in East Africa to find out how researchers are using AI to conserve wildlife in one of the world’s most spectacular ecosystems.  For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com.  Interviewees: DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, Pushmeet Kohli & Sarah Jane Dunn; Meredith Palmer of the Princeton University CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic composition: Eleni ShawSound Engineer: Nigel AppletonEditor: David PrestCommissioned by DeepMind Thank you to everyone who made th

Hannah meets DeepMind co-founder and chief scientist Shane Legg, the man who coined the phrase ‘artificial general intelligence’, and explores how it might be built. Why does Shane think AGI is possible? When will it be realised? And what could it look like? Hannah also explores a simple theory of using trial and error to reach AGI and takes a deep dive into MuZero, an AI system which mastered complex board games from chess to Go, and is now generalising to solve a range of important tasks in the real world. For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com.  Interviewees: DeepMind’s Shane Legg, Doina Precup, Dave Silver & Jackson Broshear CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic composition: Eleni ShawSound Engineer: Nigel AppletonEditor: David PrestCommissioned by DeepMind Thank you to everyone who made this season possible!  Further reading: Real-world challenges for AGI

Do you need a body to have intelligence? And can one exist without the other? Hannah takes listeners behind the scenes of DeepMind's robotics lab in London where she meets robots that are trying to independently learn new skills, and explores why physical intelligence is a necessary part of intelligence. Along the way, she finds out how researchers trained their robots at home during lockdown, uncovers why so many robotics demonstrations are faking it, and what it takes to train a robotic football team.  For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com.  Interviewees: DeepMind’s Raia Hadsell, Viorica Patraucean, Jan Humplik, Akhil Raju & Doina Precup CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic composition: Eleni ShawSound Engineer: Nigel AppletonEditor: David PrestCommissioned by DeepMind Thank you to everyone who made this season possible!  Further reading: Stacking our way

Cooperation is at the heart of our society. Inventing the railway, giving birth to the Renaissance, and creating the Covid-19 vaccine all required people to combine efforts. But cooperation is so much more. It governs our education systems, healthcare, and food production. In this episode, Hannah meets the researchers working on cooperative AI, and hears about their work and influences from the famous American psychologist - and pigeon trainer -  BF Skinner to the strategic board game Diplomacy. For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com Interviewees: DeepMind’s Thore Graepel, Kevin Mckee, Doina Precup & Laura Weidinger CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic composition: Eleni ShawSound Engineer: Nigel AppletonEditor: David PrestCommissioned by DeepMind Thank you to everyone who made this season possible!  Further reading: Machines must learn to find common ground,

In December 2019, DeepMind’s AI system, AlphaFold, solved a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology, known as the protein-folding problem. A headline in the journal Nature read, “It will change everything” and the President of the UK's Royal Society called it a “stunning advance [that arrived] decades before many in the field would have predicted”. In this episode, Hannah uncovers the inside story of AlphaFold from the people who made it happen and finds out how it could help transform the future of healthcare and medicine.For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com. Interviewees: DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, John Jumper, Kathryn Tunyasunakool and Sasha Brown; Charles Mowbray and Monique Wasuna of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi]) & John McGeehan of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic

Hannah explores the potential of language models, the questions they raise, and if teaching a computer about language is enough to create artificial general intelligence (AGI). Beyond helping us communicate ideas, language plays a crucial role in memory, cooperation, and thinking – which is why AI researchers have long aimed to communicate with computers using natural language. Recently, there has been extraordinary progress using large-language models (LLM), which learn how to speak by processing huge amounts of data from the internet. The results can be very convincing, but pose significant ethical challenges.  For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email podcast@deepmind.com.  Interviewees: DeepMind’s Geoffrey Irving, Chris Dyer, Angeliki Lazaridou, Lisa-Anne Hendriks & Laura Weidinger  CreditsPresenter: Hannah FrySeries Producer: Dan HardoonProduction support: Jill AchinekuSounds design: Emma BarnabyMusic composition: Eleni ShawSound Engineer: Nigel AppletonEditor:

The chart-topping podcast which uncovers the extraordinary ways artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our world is back for a second season. Join mathematician and broadcaster Professor Hannah Fry behind the scenes of world-leading AI research lab DeepMind to get the inside story of how AI is being created – and how it can benefit our lives and the society we live in.Recorded over six months and featuring over 30 original interviews, including DeepMind co-founders Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg, the podcast gives listeners exclusive access to the brilliant people building the technology of the future. Throughout nine original episodes, Hannah discovers how DeepMind is using AI to advance science in critical areas, like solving a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology and developing nuclear fusion.Listeners hear stories of teaching robots to walk at home during lockdown, as well as using AI to forecast weather, help people regain their voices, and enhance game strategies with Liverpool Football Club. Han

In this special extended episode, Hannah Fry meets Demis Hassabis, the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind. She digs into his former life as a chess player, games designer and neuroscientist and explores how his love of chess helped him to get start-up funding, what drives him and his vision, and why AI keeps him up at night.If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter (@DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or email us at podcast@deepmind.com.Further reading:Wired: Inside DeepMind's epic mission to solve science's trickiest problemQuanta magazine: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing ScienceDemis Hassabis: A systems neuroscience approach to building AGI. Talk at the 2010 Singularity Summit Demis Hassabis: The power of self-learning systems. Talk at MIT 2019Demis Hassabis: Talk on Creativity and AI Financial Times: The mind in the machine: Demis Hassabis on artificial intelligence (2017)The Times: Interview with Demis HassabisThe Economist Babbage podcast: DeepMind GamesInterview wit

AI researchers around the world are trying to create a general purpose learning system that can learn to solve a broad range of problems without being taught how. Koray Kavukcuoglu, DeepMind’s Director of Research, describes the journey to get there, and takes Hannah on a whistle-stop tour of DeepMind’s HQ and its research.If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter (@DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or email us at podcast@deepmind.com.Further reading:OpenAI: An overview of neural networks and the progress that has been made in AIShane Legg, DeepMind co-founder: Measuring machine intelligence at the 2010 Singularity SummitShane Legg and Marcus Hutter: Paper on defining machine intelligenceDemis Hassabis: Talk on the history, frontiers and capabilities of AIRobert Wiblin: Positively shaping the development of artificial intelligenceAsilomar AI PrinciplesRichard S. Sutton and Andrew G. Barto: Reinforcement Learning: An IntroductionInterviewees: Koray Kavukcuoglu, Director of Re

While there is a lot of excitement about AI research, there are also concerns about the way it might be implemented, used and abused. In this episode Hannah investigates the more human side of the technology, some ethical issues around how it is developed and used, and the efforts to create a future of AI that works for everyone.If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter (@DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or email us at podcast@deepmind.com.Further reading:The Partnership on AIProPublica: investigation into machine bias in criminal sentencingScience Museum – free exhibition: Driverless: who is in control (until Oct 2020)Survival of the best fit: An interactive game that demonstrates some of the ways in which bias can be introduced into AI systems, in this case for hiringJoy Buolamwini: AI, Ain’t I a Woman: A spoken word piece exploring AI bias, and systems not recognising prominent black womenHannah Fry: Hello World - How to be Human in the Age of the MachineDeepMind: Safety

The ambition of much of AI research is to create systems that can help to solve problems in the real world. In this episode, Hannah meets the people building systems that could be used to save the sight of thousands, help us solve one of the most fundamental problems in biology and reduce energy consumption in an effort to combat climate change. But whilst there is great potential, there are also important obstacles that will need to be tackled for AI to be used effectively, safely and fairly.If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter (@DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or email us at podcast@deepmind.com.Further reading:Wired: Inside DeepMind's epic mission to solve science's trickiest problemDeepMind blogs on the partnership with Moorfields NHS eye hospital and predicting eye disease, and Moorfields’ news announcement on its research with DeepMindDeepMind blog: AlphaFold: Using AI for scientific discoveryDeepMind blogs on reducing Google’s energy bill for datacentre cooling

Forget what sci-fi has told you about superintelligent robots that are uncannily human-like; the reality is more prosaic. Inside DeepMind’s robotics laboratory, Hannah explores what researchers call ‘embodied AI’: robot arms that are learning tasks like picking up plastic bricks, which humans find comparatively easy. Discover the cutting-edge challenges of bringing AI and robotics together, and learning from scratch how to perform tasks. She also explores some of the key questions about using AI safely in the real world.If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter (@DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or email us at podcast@deepmind.com.Further reading:Blogs on AI safety and further resources from Victoria KrakovnaThe Future of Life Institute: The risks and benefits of AIThe Wall Street Journal: Protecting Against AI’s Existential ThreatTED Talks: Max Tegmark - How to get empowered, not overpowered, by AIRoyal Society lecture series sponsored by DeepMind: You & AINick Bostrom

Video games have become a favourite tool for AI researchers to test the abilities of their systems. In this episode, Hannah sits down to play StarCraft II - a challenging video game that requires players to control the onscreen action with as many as 800 clicks a minute. She is guided by Oriol Vinyals, an ex-professional StarCraft player and research scientist at DeepMind, who explains how the program AlphaStar learnt to play the game and beat a top professional player. Elsewhere, she explores systems that are learning to cooperate in a digital version of the playground favourite ‘Capture the Flag’.If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter (@DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or emailing us at podcast@deepmind.com.Further readingThe Economist: Why AI researchers like video gamesDeepMind blogs: Capture the Flag and AlphastarProfessional StarCraft II player MaNa gives his impressions of AlphaStar and DeepMindOpen AI’s work on Dota 2 The New York Times: DeepMind can now beat us

In March 2016, more than 200 million people watched AlphaGo become first computer program to defeat a professional human player at the game of Go, a milestone in AI research that was considered to be a decade ahead of its time. Since then the team has continued to develop the system and recently unveiled AlphaZero: a program that has taught itself how to play chess, Go, and shogi. Hannah explores the inside story of both with Lead Researcher David Silver and finds out why games are a useful proving ground for AI researchers. She also meets Chess Grandmaster Matthew Sadler and women’s international master Natasha Regan, who have written a book on AlphaZero and its unique gameplay.If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter (@DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or email us at podcast@deepmind.com.Further readingAlphaGo the documentary The Surrounding Game: Documentary about the ancient game of GoDeepMind website: AlphaGoGarry Kasparov: Deep ThinkingAI: More than Human - Exhibition

What can the human brain teach us about AI? And what can AI teach us about our own intelligence? These questions underpin a lot of AI research. In this first episode, Hannah meets the DeepMind Neuroscience team to explore these connections and discovers how our brains are like birds’ wings, what training a dog and an AI agent have in common, and why the simplest things for people to do are, paradoxically, often the hardest for machines.If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter (@DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or email us at podcast@deepmind.com.Further readingBBC: An AI playlistWait But Why: The AI RevolutionCoursera: AI for everyoneMedium: Machine Learning for HumansGoogle Arts & Culture: 25 moments that have defined AIRoyal Society: What is Machine Learning?The Algorithm: A weeklyemail newsletter from MIT Tech ReviewDeepMind blog: neuroscience and AI: a virtuous circleNature: Far-sighted birds plan breakfast the evening beforeInterviewees in this episode: Deepmind C

Selected as “New and Noteworthy” by Apple Podcasts, the highly-praised, award-nominated first season of "DeepMind: The Podcast" explores the fascinating world of artificial intelligence (AI). Join mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry as she meets world-class scientists and thinkers as they explain the foundations of AI, explore some of the challenges the field is wrestling with, and dives into the research that's led to breakthroughs like AlphaGo and AlphaFold. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced researcher, join our journey into the past, present, and future of AI. “I hope what people are going to get out of this series is a better understanding of artificial intelligence, and I hope they also get a great feeling for how exhilarating an endeavour and a journey we’re on.” - Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of DeepMind If you have a question or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind using the hashtag #DMpodcast) or email us at podcast@deepmind.com.