From USI to Google DeepMind - Shane Legg's talk at the 28th Dies academicus

USI's 28th Dies academicus featured a talk by Shane Legg, USI alumnus, co-founder of Google DeepMind and one of the world's 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence. Dr. Legg shared his experiences and visions regarding the promising future and challenges of artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). He was presented with the first USI Alumni Award on this occasion.

During an interview with science disseminator Mirko Bischofberger, Dr Shane Legg recounted the beginnings and aspirations that launched his career and scientific contributions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) to a packed audience in Aula Magna. Dr Legg explained that he was initially inspired by the complexities and potential of AI. He then recalled the pivotal moments and choices that led him to pursue a PhD, which he was awarded in 2008 by the Faculty of Informatics at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). Dr Legg then discussed his research activities at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA USI-SUPSI). The story continued with his chance meeting with Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, which led him to found DeepMind. Dr Legg then gave an overview of Google DeepMind's current projects, highlighting the progress and ongoing initiatives at the frontier of what current AI systems can achieve. Looking ahead, Dr Legg shared his expectations for the future of DeepMind, particularly in the field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and its implications for society.

He was presented with the first USI Alumni Award "for outstanding achievements in his career".

Biography
Shane Legg, originally from New Zealand, is a leading figure in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He is best known for his work on artificial general intelligence (AGI) and for co-founding DeepMind Technologies, later acquired by Google. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Waikato in 1996 and earned his MSc with a thesis on Solomonoff Induction at the University of Auckland in the same year. Legg, together with Ben Goertzel, played a significant role in promoting the term 'artificial general intelligence' (AGI) in the early 2000s. This term has been instrumental in shifting the focus of AI research towards creating systems that can perform any cognitive task that a human can perform. He expressed concerns about the existential risks posed by AI and signed a statement on the risk of AI's extinction in 2023. Before completing his PhD at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA) at Università della Svizzera italiana, where he worked on theoretical models of super-intelligent machines with Marcus Hutter, Legg held various positions in software development and worked on big data projects. His doctoral thesis, "Machine Super Intelligence", laid the foundation for his later work. After his PhD, he completed a post-doc in finance and then continued his research at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London.

In 2010, he co-founded DeepMind Technologies with Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman. The startup quickly became a leading AI research lab, focusing on learning and neural networks, before being acquired by Google in 2014.