BBC Inside Science

Artificial Intelligence, Desalination, History of Forensics, Music from Cells

26 Feb 2015

Audio

Description

A computer system has taught itself how to play dozens of video games. AI researchers claim this is a significant step toward machine intelligence, because the learning process is similar to how humans learn. The program, labelled DQN by its creators at Google DeepMind, performed as well as or better than humans at assorted Atari video games, such as Breakout, and Pong. This style of "Deep learning" is useful because it can be more readily applied to real world scenarios. As Adam Rutherford discovers,it's a short step from mastering a driving simulation game to self-driving cars.Desalination to produce fresh drinking water is on the rise, but the bi-products of the process - acidic brine and carbon dioxide, are a growing environmental problem Adam Rutherford talks to Dr Philip Davies who's devised a new idea for treating brine from desalination plants that could help curb carbon dioxide emissions and go a long way towards addressing acidification of our oceans.Plymouth music festival, Biomusic, features a new work by composer Eduardo Miranda, inspired by a fungus mould. Roland Pease meets the musical pioneer who finds music in biological tissuesA new exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation explores the history, science and art of forensic medicine, from the crime scene to the courtroom. Adam heads down to 'Forensics: the anatomy of crime' for a tour with forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop, who worked on high profile cases including the murders of both Damilola Taylor and Stephen Lawrence, and also meets exhibition curator Lucy Shanahan.

Transcription

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.

0 upvotes

🗳️ Sign in to Upvote

Popular episodes get transcribed faster

Other episodes from BBC Inside Science

Transcribed and ready to explore now

The science behind hantavirus

14 May 2026

BBC Inside Science

Should Pluto become a planet again?

07 May 2026

BBC Inside Science

Why is Europe the fastest-warming continent?

30 Apr 2026

BBC Inside Science

View all episodes from BBC Inside Science

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.

Report any issue

BBC Inside Science

Artificial Intelligence, Desalination, History of Forensics, Music from Cells

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Other episodes from BBC Inside Science

The science behind hantavirus

Should Pluto become a planet again?

Why is Europe the fastest-warming continent?

Sign in to Audioscrape

Share this moment