Google DeepMind: The Podcast

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 [email protected].

Interviewees: DeepMind’s Sasha Brown, William Isaac, Shakir Mohamed, Kevin Mckee & Obum Ekeke

Credits

Presenter: Hannah Fry

Series Producer: Dan Hardoon

Production support: Jill Achineku

Sounds design: Emma Barnaby

Music composition: Eleni Shaw

Sound Engineer: Nigel Appleton

Editor: David Prest

Commissioned by DeepMind

Thank you to everyone who made this season possible!

Further reading:

What a machine learning tool that turns Obama white can (and can’t) tell us about AI bias, The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/21298762/face-depixelizer-ai-machine-learning-tool-pulse-stylegan-obama-bias

Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

Ethics & Society, DeepMind: https://deepmind.com/about/ethics-and-society

Row over AI that 'identifies gay faces', BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41188560

The Trevor Project: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

AI takes root, helping farmers identify diseased plants, Google: https://www.blog.google/technology/ai/ai-takes-root-helping-farmers-identity-diseased-plants/

How Can You Use Technology to Support a Culture of Inclusion and Diversity?, myHRfuture: https://www.myhrfuture.com/blog/2019/7/16/how-can-you-use-technology-to-support-a-culture-of-inclusion-and-diversity

Scholarships at DeepMind: https://www.deepmind.com/scholarships

AI, Ain’t I a Woman? Joy Buolamwini, YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxuyfWoVV98

How to be Human in the Age of the Machine, Hannah Fry: https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/book-prizes/science-book-prize/2018/hello-world/

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.

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 [email protected].

Further reading:

1. The Partnership on AI
2. ProPublica: investigation into machine bias in criminal sentencing
3. Science Museum – free exhibition: Driverless: who is in control (until Oct 2020)
4. 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 hiring
5. Joy Buolamwini: AI, Ain’t I a Woman: A spoken word piece exploring AI bias, and systems not recognising prominent black women
6. Hannah Fry: Hello World - How to be Human in the Age of the Machine
7. DeepMind: Safety and Ethics
8. Future of Humanity Institute: AI Governance:A Research Agenda

Interviewees: Verity Harding, Co-Lead of DeepMind Ethics and Society; DeepMind’s COO Lila Ibrahim, and research scientists William Isaac and Silvia Chiappa.

Credits:
Presenter: Hannah Fry
Editor: David Prest
Senior Producer: Louisa Field
Producers: Amy Racs, Dan Hardoon
Binaural Sound: Lucinda Mason-Brown
Music composition: Eleni Shaw (with help from Sander Dieleman and WaveNet)
Commissioned by 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.

How human should an AI tutor be? What does ‘good’ teaching look like? Will AI lead in the classroom, or take a back seat to human instruction? Will everyone have their own personalized AI tutor? Join research lead, Irina Jurenka, and Professor Hannah Fry as they explore the complicated yet exciting world of AI in education.

Further reading:

• Towards Responsible Development of Generative AI for Education: An Evaluation-Driven Approach

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: Daniel Lazard
• Audio Engineer: Perry Rogantin
• Video Studio Production: Nicholas Duke
• Video Editor: Bilal Merhi
• Video Production Design: James Barton
• Visual Identity and Design: Eleanor Tomlinson
• Production support: Mo Dawoud
• 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.

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 [email protected].

Further reading

• The Economist: Why AI researchers like video games
• DeepMind blogs: Capture the Flag and Alphastar
• Professional StarCraft II player MaNa gives his impressions of AlphaStar and DeepMind
• Open AI’s work on Dota 2
• The New York Times: DeepMind can now beat us at multiplayer games, too
• Royal Society: Machine Learning resources
• DeepMind: The Inside Story of AlphaStar
• Andrej Karpathy: Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels

Interviewees: Research scientists Max Jaderberg and Raia Hadsell; Lead researchers David Silver and Oriol Vinyals, and Director of Research Koray Kavukcuoglu.

Credits:
Presenter: Hannah Fry
Editor: David Prest
Senior Producer: Louisa Field
Producers: Amy Racs, Dan Hardoon
Binaural Sound: Lucinda Mason-Brown
Music composition: Eleni Shaw (with help from Sander Dieleman and WaveNet)
Commissioned by 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.

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 of the world’s most spectacular ecosystems.

For questions or feedback on the series, message us on Twitter @DeepMind or email [email protected].

Interviewees: DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, Pushmeet Kohli & Sarah Jane Dunn; Meredith Palmer of the Princeton University

Credits

Presenter: Hannah Fry

Series Producer: Dan Hardoon

Production support: Jill Achineku

Sounds design: Emma Barnaby

Music composition: Eleni Shaw

Sound Engineer: Nigel Appleton

Editor: David Prest

Commissioned by DeepMind

Thank you to everyone who made this season possible!

Further reading:

Using AI for scientific discovery, DeepMind: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaFold-Using-AI-for-scientific-discovery

DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis on its breakthrough scientific discoveries, WIRED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WRow9FqUbw

The AI revolution in scientific research, The Royal Society: https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/ai-and-society/AI-revolution-in-science.pdf

DOE Explains...Tokamaks, Office of Science: https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainstokamaks

How AI Accidentally Learned Ecology by Playing StarCraft, Discover: https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/how-ai-accidentally-learned-ecology-by-playing-starcraft

Google AI can identify wildlife from trap-camera footage, VentureBeat:
https://venturebeat.com/2019/12/17/googles-ai-can-identify-wildlife-from-trap-camera-footage-with-up-to-98-6-accuracy/

Snapshot Serengeti, Zooniverse:
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zooniverse/snapshot-serengeti

The Human Genome Project, National Human Genome Research Institute: https://www.genome.gov/human-genome-project

Exploring the beauty of pure mathematics in novel ways, DeepMind: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/exploring-the-beauty-of-pure-mathematics-in-novel-ways

Predicting gene expression with AI, DeepMind: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/enformer

Using machine learning to accelerate ecological research, DeepMind: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/using-machine-learning-to-accelerate-ecological-research

Accelerating fusion science through learned plasma control, DeepMind: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/Accelerating-fusion-science-through-learned-plasma-control

Simulating matter on the quantum scale with AI, DeepMind: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/Simulating-matter-on-the-quantum-scale-with-AI

How AI is helping the natural sciences, Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02762-6

Inside DeepMind's epic mission to solve science's trickiest problem, WIRED: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/deepmind-protein-folding

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science, Quanta:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-artificial-intelligence-is-changing-science-20190311/

Please like and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Want to share feedback? Or have a suggestion for a guest that we s...