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 ...
Feb 22, 2022•36 min•Ep. 7
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 Kohli, 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 o...
Feb 16, 2022•34 min•Ep. 6
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 th...
Feb 15, 2022•33 min•Ep. 5
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 footba...
Feb 08, 2022•34 min•Ep. 4
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. ...
Feb 01, 2022•35 min•Ep. 3
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 processi...
Jan 25, 2022•38 min•Ep. 2
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...
Jan 25, 2022•39 min•Ep. 1
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 Shan...
Jan 10, 2022•3 min
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: I...
Sep 17, 2019•37 min•Ep. 8
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: OpenA...
Sep 10, 2019•26 min•Ep. 7
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:...
Sep 03, 2019•29 min•Ep. 6
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. I...
Aug 27, 2019•31 min•Ep. 5
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...
Aug 20, 2019•33 min•Ep. 4
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 s...
Aug 20, 2019•27 min•Ep. 3
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 prov...
Aug 20, 2019•26 min•Ep. 2
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 u...
Aug 20, 2019•34 min•Ep. 1
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 a...
Aug 12, 2019•3 min
