Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
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Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#2I can highly recommend this. For us Brits this is a national institution and appearing on it is considered a badge of honour similar to a minor peerage. We listen to it live on a Sunday morning.
If you enjoy the format there is a large archive of these with many of the most influential people of the 20th century. However the modern (Kirsty Young) ones are by far the most insightful due to her masterful, understated interviewing.
I offer these as a taster to non-Brits who would like to hear more:
Dustin Hoffman:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p314n
Tom Hanks:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079m78n
Bruce Springsteen:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0855znp
Bill Gates:
Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#3I enjoyed listening to the short segment on how and why he gave up chess at 11 despite being ranked 2nd in the world for that age group. Remarkable reflectiveness for an 11-year-old. Check out this down the page:
"Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’
AI expert Demis Hassabis on giving up chess tournaments aged 11."
It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and how we can better engage them on major problems of our increasingly complex world.
Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#4I enjoyed listening to the short segment on how and why he gave up chess at 11 despite being ranked 2nd in the world for that age group. Remarkable reflectiveness for an 11-year-old. Check out this down the page: "Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’ AI expert Demis Hassabis on giving up chess tournaments aged 11." It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and h…
I think I understand your sentiment, but I'd object to the phrasing of "trivial pursuits".
If history teaches us anything, it's that humanity advances by people following their "trivial interests", rather than being herded onto the "major problems of our complex world".
What is or isn't trivial vs important is only obvious in hindsight, unfortunately. That moment might still happen for advertising and the art of capturing the human attention (or whatever you meant by this turn of phrase).
Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#5I enjoyed listening to the short segment on how and why he gave up chess at 11 despite being ranked 2nd in the world for that age group. Remarkable reflectiveness for an 11-year-old. Check out this down the page: "Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’ AI expert Demis Hassabis on giving up chess tournaments aged 11." It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and h…
I mean you can argue that as nice as AlphaGo is, it has not accomplished any thing real outside of being better at some games.
Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#6I enjoyed listening to the short segment on how and why he gave up chess at 11 despite being ranked 2nd in the world for that age group. Remarkable reflectiveness for an 11-year-old. Check out this down the page: "Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’ AI expert Demis Hassabis on giving up chess tournaments aged 11." It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and h…
I mean you can argue that as nice as AlphaGo is, it has not accomplished any thing real outside of being better at some games.
Tick tock, my dear friend, the fruits of a mathematical harvest take long to grow; but the rewarding bounties may be enough to feed the walking earth. Or at least the probability of that is higher than Magnus Carlsen providing gain to human welfare of equal measure. ;-)
Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#7Thanks for linking this. Has given me inspiration to finish off some of my projects. It is interesting he comes from a game design background.
Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#8I enjoyed listening to the short segment on how and why he gave up chess at 11 despite being ranked 2nd in the world for that age group. Remarkable reflectiveness for an 11-year-old. Check out this down the page: "Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’ AI expert Demis Hassabis on giving up chess tournaments aged 11." It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and h…
I mean you can argue that as nice as AlphaGo is, it has not accomplished any thing real outside of being better at some games.
For a start:
DeepMind AI Reduces Google Data Centre Cooling Bill by 40%
https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-ce...
Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#9I enjoyed listening to the short segment on how and why he gave up chess at 11 despite being ranked 2nd in the world for that age group. Remarkable reflectiveness for an 11-year-old. Check out this down the page: "Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’ AI expert Demis Hassabis on giving up chess tournaments aged 11." It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and h…
I'm not that brilliant, but I gave up on chess myself at around 18 when I crossed the threshold of playing blind and not being able to fall asleep at night because I was replaying games in my head. I think there are plenty of indicators that a more brilliant mind would take as clues of navigating to some local intellectual optimum. :-)
Only now I'm twice that age I follow a bit of the tournaments again. Watching a banter chess episode by Jan Gustafsson is a nice way to end the day so now and then.
I think the best we can do for brilliant minds is "set them" on a path of applied math (like working on AI). I'll assume that a brilliant mind is able to pick problems that it considers solvable. Even a brilliant mind trying to solve Ramsey number R(6,6) will probably solve a lot of subproblems on the way.
Re: Desert Island Discs – Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind [audio]
#10I enjoyed listening to the short segment on how and why he gave up chess at 11 despite being ranked 2nd in the world for that age group. Remarkable reflectiveness for an 11-year-old. Check out this down the page: "Demis Hassabis: ‘I thought we were wasting our minds’ AI expert Demis Hassabis on giving up chess tournaments aged 11." It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and h…
I think I understand your sentiment, but I'd object to the phrasing of "trivial pursuits". If history teaches us anything, it's that humanity advances by people following their "trivial interests", rather than being herded onto the "major problems of our complex world". What is or isn't trivial vs important is only obvious in hindsight, unfortunately. That moment might still happen for advertising and the art of capt…
> What is or isn't trivial vs important is only obvious in hindsight, unfortunately.
Amongst things of similar nature, sure, but surely you're not arguing that being very good at chess is just as likely advance humanity in some important way as directly tackling current existential dangers?