Consciousness, Reasoning and the Philosophy of AI with Murray Shanahan

04/24/25 • 40 min

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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.

Previous Episode

Is Human Data Enough? With David Silver

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

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