Desert Island Discs: Archive: 2016-201821 Maj 2017

Demis Hassabis

Kirsty Young's castaway is Dr Demis Hassabis. An artificial intelligence researcher and co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, he is also a neuroscientist, a computer games designer, an entrepreneur, and in his youth, a world-class chess player.

Born in 1976, he was introduced to chess aged four and, by the age of twelve, was the world's second-highest ranked player for his age. With his winnings, he bought himself a PC and taught himself to code. After taking his A Levels two years early, before going to university he worked on one of the most successful computer games of the 1990s, Theme Park. He graduated from Cambridge with a double first, and returned to the computer games industry, founding his own company in his early twenties.

His passion had long been artificial intelligence and he says everything he's done has been part of a long-term plan to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else". He gained a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience where he deliberately chose to study topics where AI had failed so far: memory and imagination. After stints at MIT and Harvard, he co-founded his company in 2010, which was then acquired by Google in January 2014. In March 2016 their computer programme, AlphaGo, beat a world champion Go player at the game having taught itself how to play through a combination of two techniques - deep learning and reinforcement learning.

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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Avsnitt(126)

Joyce DiDonato

Kirsty Young's castaway is the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. Winner of two Grammy Awards, she is best known for her interpretations of Handel, Mozart and Rossini operas. Born into a Catholic family in...

25 Sep 201637min

Nadiya Hussain

Kirsty Young's castaway is the baker and winner of The Great British Bake Off in 2015, Nadiya Hussain. One of six children born to Bangladeshi parents in Luton, it was her father - a restaurateur - wh...

14 Aug 201634min

Michael Heath

Kirsty Young's castaway is the cartoonist Michael Heath.He's been working for newspapers and magazines for sixty years and sold his first drawing to the Melody Maker in the 1950s. For the past twenty ...

7 Aug 201636min

Jilly Cooper

Kirsty Young’s castaway is the writer Jilly Cooper.Her long writing career spans newspaper columns for the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday, non-fiction books on class, marriage and animals in war ...

31 Juli 201636min

Professor Dame Ann Dowling

Kirsty Young's castaway is the engineer and international expert on aircraft noise reduction, Professor Dame Ann Dowling. The first female president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, one of her pas...

24 Juli 201636min

Levi Roots

Kirsty Young's castaway is the entrepreneur, Levi Roots.His business success began following an appearance on BBC Two's Dragon's Den in 2007. With guitar in hand, he sang about his 'Reggae reggae sauc...

17 Juli 201634min

Nicole Farhi

Kirsty Young's castaway is the designer and sculptor Nicole Farhi.Born into a Turkish family in France, Nicole's interest in fashion was present from an early age. As a child, she used to design cloth...

10 Juli 201636min

Matthew Barzun

Kirsty Young's castaway is the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Matthew Barzun.Born in New York City as the second of four children to Roger Barzun, a lawyer, and his wife Serita Winthrop, he was ...

3 Juli 201635min