
Gaming, Goats & General Intelligence with Frederic Besse
09/25/24 • 40 min
1 Listener
Games are a very good training ground for agents. Think about it. Perfectly packaged, neatly constrained environments where agents can run wild, work out the rules for themselves, and learn how to handle autonomy. In this episode, Research Engineering Team Lead, Frederic Besse, joins Hannah as they discuss important research like SIMA (Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent) and what we can expect from future agents that can understand and safely carry out a wide range of tasks - online and in the real world.
Further reading:
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
- Production support: Mo Dawoud
- Music composition: Eleni Shaw
- Camera Director and Video Editor: Tommy Bruce
- 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.
Games are a very good training ground for agents. Think about it. Perfectly packaged, neatly constrained environments where agents can run wild, work out the rules for themselves, and learn how to handle autonomy. In this episode, Research Engineering Team Lead, Frederic Besse, joins Hannah as they discuss important research like SIMA (Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent) and what we can expect from future agents that can understand and safely carry out a wide range of tasks - online and in the real world.
Further reading:
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
- Production support: Mo Dawoud
- Music composition: Eleni Shaw
- Camera Director and Video Editor: Tommy Bruce
- 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.
Previous Episode

Decoding Google Gemini with Jeff Dean
Professor Hannah Fry is joined by Jeff Dean, one of the most legendary figures in computer science and chief scientist of Google DeepMind and Google Research. Jeff was instrumental to the field in the late 1990s, writing the code that transformed Google from a small startup into the multinational company it is today. Hannah and Jeff discuss it all - from the early days of Google and neural networks, to the long term potential of multi-modal models like Gemini.
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
- Production support: Mo Dawoud
- Music composition: Eleni Shaw
- Camera Director and Video Editor: Tommy Bruce
- 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.
Next Episode

AI: Supercharging Scientific Exploration with Pushmeet Kohli
In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry sits down with Pushmeet Kohli, VP of Research at Google DeepMind to discuss AI’s impact on scientific discovery. They go on a whirlwind tour of scientific projects, touching on recent breakthroughs in AlphaFold, material science, weather forecasting, and mathematics to better understand how AI can enhance our scientific understanding of the world.
Further reading:
- Millions of new materials discovered with deep learning
- GraphCast: AI model for faster and more accurate global weather forecasting
- AlphaFold: A breakthrough unfolds (S2,E1)
- AlphaGeometry: An Olympiad-level AI system for geometry
- AI achieves silver-medal standard solving International Mathematical Olympiad problems
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: Tommy Bruce
- 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.
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