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Episode details

World Service,10 Aug 2024,49 mins

The Engineers: Intelligent machines

The Documentary

Available for over a year

Intelligent machines are remaking our world. The speed of their improvement is accelerating fast and every day there are more things they can do better than us. There are risks, but the opportunities for human society are enormous. ‘Machine Learning AI’ is the technological revolution of our era. Three engineers at the forefront of that revolution come to London to join Caroline Steel and a public audience at the Great Hall of Imperial College. Regina Barzilay from MIT created a major breakthrough in detecting early stage breast cancer. She also led the team that used machine learning to discover Halicin, the first new antibiotic in 30 years. David Silver is Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. He led the AlphaGo team that built the AI to defeat the world’s best human player of Go. Paolo Pirjanian founded Embodied, and is a pioneer in developing emotionally intelligent robots to aid child development. Producer: Charlie Taylor (Image: 3D hologram AI brain displayed by digital circuit and semiconductor. Credit: Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images)

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