In this episode, Hannah is once again joined by Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind, for a philosophical deep dive on AI. They explore everything from consciousness and metacognition in animals, to symbolic AI and neural networks. Murray also shares insights into his involvement with the film 'Ex Machina' and discusses the idea of reasoning, anthropomorphism, and the future of AI.

Further reading / listening:

• Toward the future, S1 Ep 7: https://youtu.be/yf31XT1G1RQ?si=6mAEsQhKwKPWk9oH

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Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:

• Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry
• Series Producer: Dan Hardoon
• Editor: Rami Tzabar
• Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif
• Music composition: Eleni Shaw
• Audio engineer: Richard Courtice
• Production Manager: Dan Lazard
• Video Director: Bernardo Resende
• Video Editor: Alex Baro Cayetano, Bilal Merhi
• Audio Engineer: Richard Courtice
• Camera and Lighting Operator: Robert Messere
• Production Coordination: Zoey Roberts, Sarah Ellen Morton
• Visual Identity and Design: Rob Ashley
• Commissioned by Google DeepMind

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Please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts if you enjoyed this episode. We always want to hear from our audience whether that's in the form of feedback, new idea or a guest recommendation!

In this episode of Google DeepMind: The Podcast, VP of Reinforcement Learning, David Silver, describes his vision for the future of AI, exploring the concept of the "era of experience" versus the current "era of human data". Using AlphaGo and AlphaZero as examples, he highlights how these systems surpassed human capabilities by engaging in reinforcement learning without prior human knowledge. This approach contrasts with large language models, which depend on human data and feedback. Silver emphasizes the need to explore this path to drive AI progress and achieve artificial superintelligence.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:50 Era of experience
• 03:45 AlphaZero
• 10:19 Move 37
• 15:20 Reinforcement learning and human feedback
• 24:30 AlphaProof
• 29:50 Math Olympiads
• 35:00 Experience based methods
• 42:56 Hannah's reflections
• 44:00 Fan Hui joins

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Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:

• Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry
• Series Producer: Dan Hardoon
• Series Editor: Rami Tzabar
• Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif
• Music Composition: Eleni Shaw
• Audio Engineer: Richard Courtice
• Production Manager: Dan Lazard
• Video Director and Editor: Bernardo Resende
• Video Studio Production: Nicholas Duke
• Video Editor: Bilal Merhi
• Audio Engineer: Perry Rogantin
• Camera and Lighting Operator: Robert Messere
• Production Coordination: Zoey Roberts, Sarah Ellen Morton
• Visual Identity and Design: Rob Ashley
• Commissioned by Google DeepMind

Please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts if you enjoyed this episode. We always want to hear from our audience whether that's in the form of feedback or a guest recommendation!

In our final episode for the year, we explore Project Astra, a research prototype exploring future capabilities of a universal AI assistant that can understand the world around you. Host Hannah Fry is joined by Greg Wayne, Director in Research at Google DeepMind. They discuss the inspiration behind the research prototype, its current strengths and limitations, as well as potential future use cases. Hannah even gets the chance to put Project Astra's multilingual skills to the test.

Further reading / listening:

• Gemini 2.0
• Project Astra
• Decoding Google Gemini with Jeff Dean
• Gaming, Goats & General Intelligence with Frederic Besse

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:

• Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry
• Series Producer: Dan Hardoon
• Editor: Rami Tzabar, TellTale Studios
• Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif
• Music composition: Eleni Shaw
• Camera Director and Video Editor: Bernardo Resende
• Audio Engineer: Perry Rogantin
• Video Studio Production: Nicholas Duke
• Video Editor: Bilal Merhi
• Video Production Design: James Barton
• Visual Identity and Design: Eleanor Tomlinson
• Commissioned by Google DeepMind

Please like and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Want to share feedback? Or have a suggestion for a guest that we should have on next? Leave us a comment on YouTube and stay tuned for future episodes.