AlphaGo -doco
Any A.I. viewing recommendations list I give will no doubt start with this one. Although it’s a few years old alphaGo is the quintessential tale of human versus machine.
The film tells the story of a historic match between a champion human player of the board game Go (Lee Sedol) and an artificial intelligence program developed by DeepMind called AlphaGo.
In 2016, this match stunned Go players in China and now, in 2022 and 2023, people around the world are realizing the significance of this event.
Even my friends that are not particularly enthusiastic about artificial intelligence have found this documentary compelling, and it somewhat legitimising of the natural inclination to be conflicted about an AI’s success.
Once you’ve witnessed what DeepMind was able to achieve with AlphaGo it brings context to their current endevours with AlphaCode, their competitive programming AI.
At the time of writing alpha code is currently placing in the top 60% of coders in programming competitions aimed at humans. Could AlphaCode one day become number one?
Interview with Demis Hassabis
Once you have watched AlphaGo then the next video I would suggest is to watch this interview with DeepMind co-founder and CEO;
Demis Hassabis.
The path that Demis’ life has weaved is a fascinating thread. From being child prodigy chess champion at an early age through becoming a video game designer and now bringing his skills to some of the world’s most pressing issues in clean energy and medicine.
Obviously history has no single narrative, but it’s interesting to hear Demis’ historical perspective, as someone who persevered with reinforcement learning when everyone else was looking to quantum computing and robotics for the future.
Two Minute Papers – YouTube
“hold on to your paper scholars!”
As of march 2023, the pace of artificial intelligence research papers is such that 300 papers are released submitted every day!
Thankfully this excellent channel brings you some of the most interesting ones in fast yet informative detail. This hide and seek video is a few years old now, but it really shows something special. The ability of AI to think outside the box and problem solve in ways we never imagined can be jawdropping.
“What a time to be alive!”
The Life Architect – Dr Alan D. Thompson
Dr Alan D. Thompson has been working in the field of intelligence for much of his career, mostly working with child prodigies around the world.
He is a prolific content creator and enthusiastic sharer of knowledge, news, and perspective.
His blog https://lifearchitect.ai/ is full of practical hacks and experiments that are well ahead of the curve, and his “monthly” paid newsletter “The Memo” is currently being pushed out weekly due to the high volume of breaking news.
His passion for transformative AI is infectious. A much watch channel.