In this episode of No Priors, hosts Sarah and Elad are joined by Oriol Vinyals, VP of Research, Deep Learning Team Lead, at Google DeepMind and Technical Co-lead of the Gemini project. Oriol shares insights from his career in machine learning, including leading the AlphaStar team and building competitive StarCraft agents. We talk about Google DeepMind, forming the Gemini project, and integrating AI technology throughout Google products. Oriol also discusses the advancements and challenges in long context LLMs, reasoning capabilities of models, and the future direction of AI research and applications. The episode concludes with a reflection on AGI timelines, the importance of specialized research, and advice for future generations in navigating the evolving landscape of AI.

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Show Notes: 

(00:00) Introduction to Oriol Vinyals

(00:55) The Gemini Project and Its Impact

(02:04) AI in Google Search and Chat Models

(08:29) Infinite Context Length and Its Applications

(14:42) Scaling AI and Reward Functions

(31:55) The Future of General Models and Specialization

(38:14) Reflections on AGI and Personal Insights

(43:09) Will the Next Generation Study Computer Science?

(45:37) Closing thoughts