Google DeepMind: The Podcast

Neel and his team are trying to do something phenomenally difficult: understand an intelligence that didn't come with a manual. Together, they explore the cutting-edge "neuroscience" of artificial intelligence—revealing the surprising, elegant structures being discovered inside these networks (like spare autoencoders), the inherent limits of looking under the hood, and why interpretability is abso...

Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 1:07 Defining AI agents 4:44 Agentic exploration in science and research 15:46 Delegation between agents 22:46 Agentic security and traps 29:31 Building an agentic economy 33:22 Cognitive monoculture 36:29 Distributed intelligence  To read the research, search for: Distributional AGI Safety, May 2026 Intelligent AI Delegation, February 2026 Virtual Agent Economies, September...

Seoul, March 2016. Two players sit hunched over a 19x19 grid covered in a sea of black and white stones. They are playing the ancient game of Go - a game of unimaginable complexity long thought impossible for a machine to master. On one side is Lee Sedol (Sae Dol), a legendary 18-time Go world champion. On the other, AlphaGo, a neural network based AI system built on a powerful technique called re...

Thanks for joining us this year.  🔔 Subscribe to stay updated on our return in 2026, and revisit our episode library to catch up on everything from driverless cars to drug discovery: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqYmG7hTraZBiUr6_Qf8YTS2Oqy3OGZEj Please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts if you enjoyed this episode. We always want to hear from our audience whether that's in t...

Further reading Levels of AGI paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.02462 The road to AGI (Google DeepMind Podcast, S2): https://youtu.be/Uy4OYU7PQYA Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:  Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry Series Producer: Dan Hardoon Editor: Rami Tzabar  Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif Music composition: Eleni Shaw Audio engineer: Richard Courtic...

Learn more about AlphaFold: https://deepmind.google/science/alphafold/ Watch the story behind AlphaFold in The Thinking Game, now available for free: https://youtu.be/d95J8yzvjbQ Thank you to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:  Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry Series Producer: Dan Hardoon Editor: Rami Tzabar Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif Music composition: Eleni S...

Learn more about Waymo: https://waymo.com/ Thank you to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:  Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry Series Producer: Dan Hardoon Editor: Rami Tzabar Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif Music composition: Eleni Shaw Audio engineer: Richard Courtice Video editor: Anthony Le Audio engineer: Perry Rogantin Visual identity: Rob Ashley Commissioned by...

In part two, Hannah and Four tackle the human element at the heart of cybersecurity: Who are the bad actors, and what motivates them? They dissect the evolving strategies designed to stop social engineering attacks - like passkeys and risk-based authentication - and confront the complex security and privacy challenges that may be introduced by autonomous agents. Please leave us a review on Spotify...

Further reading: CodeMender: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/introducing-codemender-an-ai-agent-for-code-security/ Cybersecurity at Google: https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/ai-security-frontier-strategy-tools/ Threat intelligence report: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/adversarial-misuse-generative-ai Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including...

In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry speaks with Jack Parker-Holder and Shlomi Fruchter about Genie 3, a general-purpose world model that can generate an unprecedented diversity of interactive environments. The conversation covers how this model's auto-regressive nature allows for the creation of consistent, explorable worlds from text or image prompts, and how its capabilities differ from video...

This week's episode is a slight departure from our usual deep dives. Join Paige Bailey, DevRel lead, as she guides Hannah Fry though some of her favorite AI tools. Having spent years understanding the 'what' of these models, Hannah finally gets to experience the 'how’ – from generating prompts and 'vibe coding', to creating her own version of the infamous spaghetti meme. Learn more and try the too...

Further reading: Natural forests of the world: paper , data and benchmarks Forest loss drivers: paper, summary from WRI , and blog from GFW Forest loss drivers code: Google Earth Engine ; at WRI ; at GFW ; or Zenodo .  Deep learning based remote sensing (open source): Jeo , GeeFlow Species mapping paper: Arxiv Google resources: Google Earth Engine . Agri with Google , wildlife cameras Perch: code,...

In this episode, host Hannah Fry is joined by Max Jaderberg and Rebecca Paul of Isomorphic Labs to explore the future of drug discovery in the age of AI. They discuss how new technology, particularly AlphaFold 3, is revolutionizing the field by predicting the structure of life’s molecules, paving the way for faster and more efficient drug discovery. They dig into the immense complexities of design...

In this episode, Hannah is joined by Carolina Parada, Senior Director and Head of Robotics at Google DeepMind. They explore the recent leap forward in robotic capabilities, highlighting advancements in multimodal understanding and embodied reasoning, which enable robots to interact with the physical world with unprecedented generality. They dig into the two-system approach - ‘slow and fast thinkin...

In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry interviews Joelle Barral, Senior Director of Research at Google DeepMind, about AI in healthcare. They discuss existing AI applications including image analysis for diabetic retinopathy and the expansion of diagnostic tools as a result of multi-modal models. The conversation highlights AI's potential to improve healthcare delivery, personalize treatment, expan...

In this episode, Hannah is once again joined by Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind, for a philosophical deep dive on AI. They explore everything from consciousness and metacognition in animals, to symbolic AI and neural networks. Murray also shares insights into his involvement with the film 'Ex Machina' and discus...

In this episode of Google DeepMind: The Podcast, VP of Reinforcement Learning, David Silver, describes his vision for the future of AI, exploring the concept of the "era of experience" versus the current "era of human data". Using AlphaGo and AlphaZero as examples, he highlights how these systems surpassed human capabilities by engaging in reinforcement learning without prior human knowledge. This...

In our final episode for the year, we explore Project Astra, a research prototype exploring future capabilities of a universal AI assistant that can understand the world around you. Host Hannah Fry is joined by Greg Wayne, Director in Research at Google DeepMind. They discuss the inspiration behind the research prototype, its current strengths and limitations, as well as potential future use cases...

In this episode, Hannah is joined by Oriol Vinyals, VP of Drastic Research and Gemini co-lead. They discuss the evolution of agents from single-task models to more general-purpose models capable of broader applications, like Gemini. Vinyals guides Hannah through the two-step process behind multi modal models: pre-training (imitation learning) and post-training (reinforcement learning). They discus...

There is broad consensus across the tech industry, governments and society, that as artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in every aspect of our world, regulation will be essential. But what does this look like? Can it be adopted without stifling innovation? Are current frameworks presented by government leaders headed in the right direction? Join host Hannah Fry as she discusses these que...

NotebookLM is a research assistant powered by Gemini that draws on expertise from storytelling to present information in an engaging way. It allows users to upload their own documents and generate insights, explanations, and—more recently—podcasts. This feature, also known as audio overviews, has captured the imagination of millions of people worldwide, who have created thousands of engaging podca...

Join Professor Hannah Fry at the AI for Science Forum for a fascinating conversation with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.  They explore how AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery, delving into topics like the nuclear pore complex, plastic-eating enzymes, quantum computing, and the surprising power of Turing machines. The episode also features a special 'ask me anything' session with Nobel...

Imagine a future where we interact regularly with a range of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) assistants — and where millions of assistants interact with each other on our behalf. These experiences and interactions may soon become part of our everyday reality. In this episode, host Hannah Fry and Google DeepMind Senior Staff Research Scientist Iason Gabriel discuss the ethical implications of...

How human should an AI tutor be? What does ‘good’ teaching look like? Will AI lead in the classroom, or take a back seat to human instruction? Will everyone have their own personalized AI tutor? Join research lead, Irina Jurenka, and Professor Hannah Fry as they explore the complicated yet exciting world of AI in education.  Further reading: Towards Responsible Development of Generative AI for Edu...

In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry sits down with Pushmeet Kohli, VP of Research at Google DeepMind to discuss AI’s impact on scientific discovery. They go on a whirlwind tour of scientific projects, touching on recent breakthroughs in AlphaFold, material science, weather forecasting, and mathematics to better understand how AI can enhance our scientific understanding of the world. Further read...