What if the path to a true thinking machine was found not just in a lab… but in a game? For decades, AI’s greatest triumphs came from games: checkers, chess, Jeopardy. But no matter how many trophies it took from humans, it still couldn’t think. In this episode, we follow the contrarian scientists who refused to give up on a radical idea, one that would ultimately change how machines learn. But their breakthrough came with a cost: incredible performance, at the expense of understanding how it actually works.

THIS EPISODE FEATURES:

Yoshua Bengio, Liv Boeree, Geoffrey Hinton, Karen Hao, Keach Hagey, Jasmine Sun

LINKS:

⁠Karen Hao’s book: Empire of AI

Keach Hagey's book: The Optimist

Liv Boeree's podcast: Win Win

CREDITS:

This episode of The Last Invention was reported and produced by Andy Mills, Gregory Warner, Andrew Parsons, Megan Phelps-Roper, Matthew Boll, Seth Temple Andrews, and Ethan Mannello. It is hosted by Gregory Warner

Music for this episode was composed by ⁠⁠Scott Devendorf⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Ben Lanz⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Cobey Bienert⁠⁠, and Matthew Boll

The Last Invention artwork by ⁠⁠Jacob Boll⁠⁠

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