In the fifth installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Google DeepMind’s Chief Scientist Jeff Dean for a conversation about the origin of Jeff’s pioneering work scaling neural networks.
They discuss the first time AI captured Jeff’s imagination, the earliest Google Brain framework, the team’s stratospheric advancements in image recognition and speech-to-text, how AI is evolving, and more.
For more on X’s AI moonshots, check out Jeff on Episode 3 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Machines That Think”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jLPA8Qpc74
00:00 - Introduction
00:35 - What Jeff’s childhood was like
03:50 - The first “non-trivial” thing Jeff coded
05:02 - Jeff’s “love/hate” relationship with C++
06:59 - The first time AI captured Jeff’s imagination
10:40 - When neural networks fell “out of vogue”
12:24 - How Jeff made a career out of “starting over”
14:23 - The origins of Google Brain
17:30 - Critical components of scaling neural networks
18:43 - The earliest Google Brain framework
19:32 - How the team first built a 100x bigger neural network
22:04 - The cat video that started it all
25:02 - Google Brain’s major progress on image recognition
26:24 - Google Brain’s major progress on speech to text
27:29 - The origins of TensorFlow and TPUs
31:56 - Three breakthroughs in understanding language models
37:41 - Where Jeff thinks the world is headed
40:07 - The shift from “making things” to designing prompts
42:38 - How Jeff uses AI to enhance his own life
43:51 - Safety, security, and privacy in AI
50:26 - The future of understanding neural network behavior
53:34 - When computers are “smarter” than humans
56:52 - Jeff’s next-five-years plan
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The Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive: Andrew Ng on Deep Learning and Google Brain
In the fourth installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Andrew Ng, the founder of Google Brain and DeepLearning.AI, for a conversation about the history of neural network research and how Andrew’s pioneering ideas led to some of the biggest breakthroughs in modern-day AI.
Hear about the origins of Google’s deep learning work, how Andrew’s teenage frustrations led him to pursue a career in machine learning and automation, and the work that led up to Google Brain’s infamous “cat video” paper.
For more on X’s AI moonshots, check out Andrew on Episode 3 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Machines That Think”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jLPA8Qpc74
00:00 - Introduction
03:30 - Andrew’s groundbreaking early theories about neural networks
08:16 - Why Andrew came to X with his ideas
10:30 - The unlikely history of neural network research
15:25 - Jeff Dean as Andrew’s “partner in crime”
17:16 - The origins of Google Brain’s neural networks
18:32 - Google Brain’s evolution in and out of hardware
22:01 - Google Brain’s innovation around transformers
24:36 - Google Brain’s earliest leaps forward in AI
28:24 - Google Brain’s graduation from X into Google
31:50 - What Andrew is up to these days
34:07 - Where the AI and machine learning field is going
35:19 - Andrew’s passion for education
36:51 - Why Andrew became interested in AI as a teenager
37:53 - AI’s democratizing effect on humanity
41:34 - How Andrew defines the term “artificial intelligence”
43:51 - Google Brain’s “cat video” coming out moment
45:51 - AI’s potential positive impact on the workforce
47:17 - Andrew’s favorite aspects of moonshot-taking
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Deep Dive: Catie Cuan on Dancing and Living With Robots
In the third installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Dr. Catie Cuan, robot choreographer and former artist in residence at Everyday Robots, for a conversation about how dance can be used to build beautiful and useful robots that people want to be around.
Watch the video to hear how Catie and the Everyday Robots team transformed robotic motion into music, what it feels like when she’s dancing with a robot and why she’s “hyper-optimistic” about the future of robotics.
For more, check out Catie on Episode 5 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Living With Robots”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUcB73KgEVs
00:00 - Introduction
00:29 - Catie’s mission to make robots more humanistic and whimsical
02:12 - How Catie came to X and Everyday Robots
03:40 - Using dance to make robots less “robotic”
07:38 - Teaching robots human social cues
11:00 - Transforming robotic motion into sound with “music mode”
15:16 - Programming robots to “flock” together like animals
18:31 - How young kids interact with robots
20:15 - Catie’s own experience interacting with her robots
22:18 - Working with experts outside the field
24:36 - Designing robots to not look like “robots”
28:44 - Helping humanity face their visceral fear of robots
32:40 - The moonshot and legacy of Everyday Robots
35:42 - Catie’s advice for moonshot-takers
37:27 - Catie’s vision for what the future looks like
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Deep Dive: André Prager on Prototyping at Wing
In the second installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with André Prager, former Chief Engineer at Wing, for a conversation about the early days of Wing and how the team solved some of their toughest engineering challenges to develop simple, lightweight, inexpensive delivery drones that are now being used every day across three continents.
Watch the video to hear the story of André’s earliest inventions as a teenager, the surprising discovery that led the Wing team to rethink the drones’ sound, why engineering often feels like creating art, and more.
For more, check out André on Episode 1 of The Moonshot Podcast, “Driving the Future”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXGnjbkFLeo
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Deep Dive: Sebastian Thrun on Waymo’s Early Days
n the first installment of our Moonshot Podcast Deep Dive video interview series, X’s Captain of Moonshots Astro Teller sits down with Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of the Moonshot Factory, for a conversation about the history of Waymo and Google X, the ethics of innovation, the future of AI, and more.
Watch the video to hear how the self-driving car project got its start, Sebastian’s philosophy for building great teams, and practical advice for anyone who wants to tackle a big problem with a moonshot idea.
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What if the keys to solve the world’s hardest problems – food security, energy resilience, the digital divide – were already within our grasp?
Welcome to The Moonshot Podcast, where we go behind the scenes at X, The Moonshot Factory, to celebrate 15 years of Google’s innovation laboratory. Hosted by Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, this series gives you unprecedented access to the radical ideas and fearless inventors working to build a future we want to live in.
Explore real-world moonshots—from self-driving cars to AI-powered disaster prediction—and discover the messy, exhilarating journey of creating breakthrough technologies with the potential to reshape our world.
Some ideas will succeed. Some will fail. But every moonshot moves us forward.
Subscribe now to The Moonshot Podcast, a Blanchard House production for X, The Moonshot Factory.
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