Project Astra: exploring a universal AI assistant | Greg Wayne

In this episode we explore Project Astra, a research prototype exploring future capabilities of a universal AI assistant that can understand the world around you. Host Hannah Fry is joined by Greg Wayne, Director in Research at Google DeepMind. They discuss the inspiration behind the research prototype, its current strengths and limitations, as well as potential future use cases. Hannah even gets the chance to put Project Astra's multilingual skills to the test.

Further reading / listening:

Gemini 2.0: https://deepmind.google/technologies/...
Project Astra: https://deepmind.google/technologies/...
   • Decoding Google Gemini | Jeff Dean  
   • SIMA & general intelligence | Frederic Besse  

Timecodes
00:00 Intro to Project Astra
03:00 Hannah demo
07:00 Hardware and what's under the hood
16:56 Languages
23:00 Inspiration for Project Astra
33:55 Latency and memory
46:00 What's next
47:00 Hannah's thoughts

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:

Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry
Series Producer: Dan Hardoon
Editor: Rami Tzabar, TellTale Studios
Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif
Music composition: Eleni Shaw

Camera Director and Video Editor: Bernardo Resende
Audio Engineer: Perry Rogantin
Video Studio Production: Nicholas Duke
Video Editor: Bilal Merhi
Video Production Design: James Barton
Visual Identity and Design: Eleanor Tomlinson
Commissioned by Google DeepMind

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