The Robot Brains Podcast

Last week, we were honored to have Professor Geoff Hinton join the show for a wide-ranging discussion inspired by insights gleaned from Hinton’s journey in academia, as well as past 10 years with Google Brain. The episode covers how existing neural networks and backpropagation models operate differently than how the brain actually works; the AlexNet/ImageNet breakthrough moment; the purpose of sleep; and why it’s better to grow our computers than manufacture them...

Over the past ten years, AI has experienced breakthrough after breakthrough in everything from computer vision to speech recognition, protein folding prediction, and so much more.

Many of these advancements hinge on the deep learning work conducted by our guest, Geoff Hinton, who has fundamentally changed the focus and direction of the field. A recipient of the Turing Award, the equivalent of the Nobel prize for computer science, he has over half a million citations of his work...

Originally created to be an open domain conversational AI, your own ‘artificial BFF' that you could chat with when your real friends weren’t available — fast forward six years, and Hugging Face is the leading Natural Language Processing (NLP) start-up. The company is currently valued at $2B with over 10,000 companies using the open-source AI platform - including Bing, Apple, and Monzo...

As we all re-entered society over the last year, after months of WFH sweatpants and t-shirts, a personal stylist would have been helpful.

Well, now there’s AI for that - THE YES. By taking a quick style quiz, you’ll have daily product and brand recommendations and a personalized feed displaying exactly what you’re looking for — in your size, budget and preferences. The more you say “yes”, the more personalized your feed gets...

Music is universal. It transcends language. Melodies have the power to trigger strong emotions. In fact, our brains release dopamine - the “feel good” hormone - when we listen to music.

Today’s guest, Spotify’s Chief R&D Officer Gustav Söderström, has been helping to bring the magic of music, personalized playlists, and more recently, podcasts to people around the world...

When you are skiing down a mountain, riding your bike along a forest trail, or surfing 6-footers, it is hard enough just to concentrate on what you are doing, let alone try to capture a video of the moment.

But what if you could hire a professional videographer to follow you and capture every move?

Well, now you can in the form of AI-powered drones from Skydio. While personal use is just one application, the company has found success across a multitude of use cases...

Sports and artificial intelligence aren’t two areas that often intersect. That has begun to change as IoT and wearables have begun to be adopted by more professional sports teams. The data that’s produced can be used to identify areas of performance improvement, potential future injuries and insights about team structure on the field...

Every business wants to be a data-driven business these days; basing decisions on tangible facts derived from historical precedents and clear-cut numbers. But that’s a lot easier said than done.

This episode’s guest, Amit Prakash, is on a mission to change that. Based on his experience working on Microsoft’s Bing and then at Google working on Google Brain, he co-founded Thoughtspot to make querying data as easy as having a simple conversation...

On Episode 15 of Season 2, we’re joined by Eric Horvitz, Microsoft’s first ever Chief Scientific Officer. His research spans theoretical and practical challenges with developing systems that perceive, learn, and reason. He’s the company’s top inventor since joining in 1993 with over 300 patents filed...

The five senses...touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing. They are critical to how we perceive the world around us. Without them, we are lost. And as we grow older, they tend to weaken particularly when it comes to sight and hearing. Today’s guest, Andrew Song, is the co-founder and CEO of Whisper AI, and he is on a mission to help give people great hearing regardless of their age...