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In 2013, researchers at the artificial intelligence research company DeepMind in London set out to create a system of AI networks that could master any Atari game. And they had excellent results, with their system outperforming skilled humans at exponential rates. However, one game with some novel gameplay characteristics, Montezuma’s Revenge (1984), left the system totally stumped, unable to score a single point. This delightfully retro animation explores how the DeepMind team was finally able to conquer the game by borrowing concepts from human psychology. Further, the video explores the ways in which AI development remains a deeply human enterprise that demands our creative guidance, even as AIs increasingly outperform us at certain tasks.
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
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Virtues and vices
Why Bennie tried to disappear, and what happened when he was found decades later
16 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes
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Stories and literature
Two variants of a Hindu myth come alive in an animated ode to Indian storytelling
14 minutes
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Technology and the self
The commodified childhood – scenes from two sisters’ lives in the creator economy
14 minutes