Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Artificial intelligence expert, neuroscientist, and co-founder of DeepMind, the AI company acquired by Google.
On the island
Eight records
Tears in RainFavourite
I just love everything about this film and it was very formative for me when I saw it as a teenager because it sort of brought artificial intelligence to life in this really beautiful visual world, sumptuous visual world, I would say. And I love that speech that he gives at the end. He's talking about a couple of very emotive memories that he's seen that no other humans have seen because he's been traveling the stars. And he talks about those moments being lost forever, like tears in rain. I also love the Van Gellish soundtrack. For me, it was one of the big inspirations, you know, to think about spending my career on artificial intelligence and, you know, trying to make some of those things reality.
I picked it because it's the first C D that I ever bought. I think I was around 12, 13 years old. And later when I was a little bit older, around 15 and I taught myself how to play piano as a hobby. This was one of the first pieces I taught myself. And the thing I like about it is it sounds really beautiful, but actually technically it's quite easy to play.
The KLF featuring Tammy Wynette
I can't really say I was a rebellious teenager, but that was about as rebellious as I got as the KLF and I just love their sort of anarchic mentality. And I just remembered listening to The White Room on cassette tape, sort of non-stop, while I was studying for my A-level. So it was an important time for me.
when I got to Cambridge, I had an amazing three years. Honestly, it was the best three years of my life because I think for me, it was like a holiday camp because I'd basically been working my whole life, you know, professional chess. I never had a summer holiday because we were always traveling around the world, which was great, but I never had a normal summer holiday. And then, in my years out, instead of doing the normal travel around South America, you know, on a backpack trip, which I do regret not doing that, I was working literally from the day after my A-look exam to the day I got to Cambridge. So, I was determined at Cambridge to have, you know, a great social time as well as learning a lot of things. And for me, the Prodigy album came out in 1994, and I was listening to that all the time in my room, lying on my bed with the morning light streaming in after a whole night of going out and listening to these tracks.
The Garden is Becoming a Robe Room
I've chosen a piece by Michael Nyman who's one of my favourite sort of modern classical composers I guess you could call him and this particular piece that I listened to a lot when I was programming my first big game and really for me Theme Park was my gateway into my professional games career and I listened to this particular track a lot during the very creative sort of couple of months when we were sort of designing the game.
I think Freddie Mercury is one of the greatest vocalists of all time. And this particular track I love because it just speaks to the briefness of life and the fragility of it. And I really feel that, and I've always felt that, and how you've got to make the best use of your time because it's just so short.
I think it's about an AI or about computers or a robot maybe gaining consciousness or something like that. And talking about how quick life is going, I can't really believe, you know, I was 40 just last year. And I actually used it as the soundtrack to my fortieth birthday.
I think it relates to ultimately what I'm trying to do in this world, which is to understand the universe around us. And obviously, Interstellar was all about that, understanding time and black holes and really our place in that universe. And you know, that's what I hope to use AI for in the future.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:47You like the big questions, do you?
Yes, I've always been drawn to the huge questions in life, you know, the meaning of life, why we're here, what's going on in the universe, and things like physics and science and artificial intelligence are ways of exploring those uh mysteries.
Presenter asks
2:54What's the most unusual thing about you?
I think I probably have some quite unusual habits. I generally sleep at about four in the morning. You know, I'll get into work around 10 a.m., do a full day's work in the office, come back for dinner, spend a bit of time with the family, and then start a second day's work at 10 p.m., 11 p.m. and go on to the small hours of the morning. Usually that's the time when I do my research. So I'll be reading about the latest academic papers. I like doing all of my kind of creative thinking in the small hours of the morning. And I've a lot of habits like that that I've learnt maximize the way that I think.
Presenter asks
8:32Could you explain for me things that have been understood maybe even in the last year to two years that up until now we thought would be impossible?
Definitely. So I think there are some theories, for example, on what dreaming is. Dreams have been a mystery for thousands of years, I think. And, you know, it turns out that dreaming may be your part of the brain called the hippocampus replaying memories that you've had recently that are very emotional, that have been recorded in your mind, and then replaying them back at much faster rates while you're asleep. So your brain, the rest of your brain, gets to learn about that event, you know, what to do or what not to do from hundreds of examples, even though you only experienced it once in real life.
The keepsakes
The book
J.R.R. Tolkien
I think I'll take The Lord of the Rings because I read that several times when I was nine or something like that... I think being alone on the island, it would be maybe nice to have a very rich, deep, fantastical world to lose yourself in.
The luxury
I was gonna bring a solar powered chess computer so that I could play lots of games of chess and maybe if I ever got rescued from the island, maybe I'd be Grand Master level when I left.
Presenter asks
11:36Something occurred to you [at the chess tournament in Liechtenstein]?
Yeah, so I was at this international tournament in Liechtenstein, and we were in this huge hall, you know, hundreds of international chess players. And I was playing, I think at that point, he was the current Danish champion. So I was there, and I was 11 years old, and we were into our 10th hour of the game. And we were in this incredibly unusual ending where I had a king and queen, and he had a king, a rook, a bishop, and a knight. And he had the advantage, but it should have been a draw. And we spent literally four hours with him trying to outmaneuver me. And finally, he tried one last cheap trick, which was that he trapped my king. And all I had to do was give away my queen, and then it would be stalemate and it would be a draw. But I was so tired, I didn't think about giving my queen away. And so I resigned, unbelievably, on the final moment, because I thought it was inevitable I was going to be checkmated. And he just got up, stood up, and I remember this very well. And he went, Why have you resigned? It's a draw. And he immediately, with a flourish, sort of showed me the drawing move. And I was thinking later, as I got older, and even at the time, I was thinking that's a little bit harsh on an 11-year-old. You know, he was a grown man. It just felt sort of wrong somehow. And then it made me think the rest of that tournament: it's like, are we wasting our minds? You know, at that level of chess, they're all fantastically smart people. What if we used that brain power for something more useful, like solving cancer or curing some disease? Wouldn't that be a better use? That's 11. Yes, I thought that. It was a really epiphany moment for me.
Presenter asks
27:12Why did you say yes to Google?
I said yes, actually, precisely because of that reason. You know, I did a year of due diligence on them and how it was going to work post-the acquisition. And for me, it was nothing to do with the money. In fact, my investors, you know, mostly didn't want to sell, even though it was a lot of money. It's because I was convinced that by joining forces with Google, we could accelerate the progress of the mission. You know, by using Google's power and all their resources, we could explore this space of algorithms much faster. I could hire more brilliant research scientists, and the whole kind of mission and the whole research program would accelerate. And that's what's happened over the last three years. So it's worked.
Presenter asks
30:58I wonder if you have advice for the parents of very prodigious, smart, advanced kids?
I think that what I would do is encourage them to explore heavily when they're young and really get a wide range of experiences. So, encourage deepness and expertise in things, but not at the expense of everything else. Life's so rich, you should partake in all of it, right? So, I think the kind of skills I would teach children today are the ability to learn rather than the specific thing that you're learning. One of the first things you should learn about, which is not taught at schools, is about yourself. How do you work best? What do you want? What's your dreams? What are you excited about? And I think you have to explore that and find that out for yourself.
“Well, if you think about how civilization has evolved and all the things that, you know, human society has built around us, it's all the product of intelligence. So intelligence is this kind of meta-solution to everything else that as a society we might want to achieve or understand.”
“Dreams have been a mystery for thousands of years, I think. And, you know, it turns out that dreaming may be your part of the brain called the hippocampus replaying memories that you've had recently that are very emotional, that have been recorded in your mind, and then replaying them back at much faster rates while you're asleep.”
“Why have you resigned? It's a draw. And he immediately, with a flourish, sort of showed me the drawing move. And I was thinking later, as I got older, and even at the time, I was thinking that's a little bit harsh on an 11-year-old. … And then it made me think the rest of that tournament: it's like, are we wasting our minds? … What if we used that brain power for something more useful, like solving cancer or curing some disease? Wouldn't that be a better use?”
“I bought some books on programming and I started programming this thing and I just realized that this was an incredible tool. And I've always loved the fact that you can set your computer off, you know, late at night, doing some calculation, you can go to sleep, and then this tool carries on working for you. And then you get up and then it's solved. And for me, that's just magical. It's almost like offloading, enhancing your own mind.”
“I think that what I would do is encourage them to explore heavily when they're young and really get a wide range of experiences. … One of the first things you should learn about, which is not taught at schools, is about yourself. How do you work best? What do you want? What's your dreams? What are you excited about? And I think you have to explore that and find that out for yourself.”