Latest news with #Automat
CBS News
20-04-2025
- CBS News
Google DeepMind CEO demonstrates Genie 2, world-building AI model that could train robots
This week, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley reported on a massive leap forward in artificial intelligence technology led by Google DeepMind, the company's AI research hub. Pelley took Astra, Google DeepMind's AI assistant that can see and hear with cameras and microphones, for a test drive on the streets of London, near DeepMind's headquarters in the United Kingdom. "What can you tell me about this building I'm looking at?" he asked, wearing a pair of black glasses equipped with Astra, microphones, and a camera. "This is the Coal Drops Yard, a shopping and dining district," the AI agent replied. In a gallery filled with artwork chosen by 60 Minutes, Pelley raised a smartphone and asked Astra what painting he was standing in front of. The AI agent recognized the painting as "Automat" by Edward Hopper. Pelley asked Astra what emotions are being expressed by the painting's subject, a woman sitting alone in a cafeteria. Astra said she "appears pensive and contemplative," and that her expression suggests "a sense of solitude." And with a little push, Astra could do even more: it created a story around the painting. "It's a chilly evening in the city. A Tuesday, perhaps. The woman, perhaps named Eleanor, sits alone in the diner, enjoying a warm cup of coffee," Astra said. "She has found herself thinking about the future, wondering if she should pursue her dreams." In an interview with Google DeepMind CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis, Pelley asked if there were moments when an AI agent did something unexpected. "That has happened many times…since the beginning of DeepMind," he told Pelley. "[With] recent systems like Astra… being able to be that good at understanding the physical world was not something we were expecting it to be that good at that quickly." While reporting this story, 60 Minutes learned more about advancements in generative AI that produce images, video and even 3D interactive environments. Two years ago, Pelley and a 60 Minutes team saw a demo for an AI model that could produce short videos using simple text commands. After typing in a text prompt to generate a "golden retriever with wings," several images appeared on screen, showing a golden-haired puppy walking through grass with wings, the image fairly blurry and distorted. Two years later, the technology has made astounding progress. Director of product development Tom Hume showed 60 Minutes associate producer Katie Brennan a demonstration of Veo 2, a video-generating AI model. A similar prompt, but with even more text added to it, produced a photorealistic video of a golden retriever puppy with wings running through a field of grass and flowers. Sunlight shone through its birdlike wings that flapped as it ran. It looked like a live-action scene filmed with a movie camera, sharp and detailed. Hassabis and DeepMind research scientist Jack Parker-Holder showed Pelley an AI model called Genie 2. Genie 2 can create a 3D world from a single static image that can be explored by a human player or AI agent. Parker-Holder pointed to an employee's photograph on a screen: the view from the top of a waterfall in California, looking out at the horizon. "So, we prompt the model with this image, which is not game-like, and Genie converts it into a game-like world that you can then interact in," he explained. Suddenly, a video played of what looked like a first-person video game that starts at the top of the waterfall in the photograph. The avatar walked around the pool at the top of the waterfall, water droplets misting into the air. As they turned right, a landscape that wasn't in the original photograph appeared. In another example, a paper plane soared through a Western landscape. New features came into view as the plane soared ahead. "Every subsequent frame is generated by the AI," Parker-Holder explained. Hassabis and Parker-Holder told Pelley that these simulated 3D environments can also be used to train AI "agents" that can perform tasks. An image of a knight with a torch standing in front of three doorways came on the screen. The doorway on the right leads to a flight of stairs. Parker-Holder explained that they took one of their "most capable AI agents" and asked it to go up the staircase. The AI-controlled knight walked up the stairs, blue light pouring over the staircase and new walls appearing around him. "The Genie world model is creating the world around it on the fly and sort of imagining what's up there," Parker-Holder explained. Pelley asked Hassabis what the practical implication of this technology would be. "There's lots of implications for entertainment, and generating games and videos," Hassabis said. "But actually, the bigger goal… is building a world model, a model that can understand our world." Hassabis said future versions of this technology could create an infinite variety of simulated environments, where AI agents could learn new skills, perform tasks, and interact with people and objects. Hassabis said this training could also work for robots. "It's much harder to collect data in the real world, much more expensive, much slower. For example, robotics data," Hassabis explained. "You can only collect a small amount of that in the real world. But in simulated worlds, you can collect almost an unlimited amount. So, you'd learn first in simulated worlds with the robot, as a simulated robot. And then you would fine tune it at the end on a little bit of real-world data." Pelley wondered if Google's trove of geographic data, collected for Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Street View, could also be used to train AI. "That's what we're exploring at the moment actually… potentially using Street View kind of data to give real-world understanding and geographical understanding to our AI systems," Hassabis said. "On the other hand, you can imagine things like… bringing to life static images of real places, whether it's your own holiday photos or actually Street View…[and] making them interactive and 3D, so you can look around." The video above was produced by Will Croxton. It was edited by Sarah Shafer. Artwork courtesy of the Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper / ARS, NY
CBS News
20-04-2025
- Science
- CBS News
What's next in artificial intelligence according to a tech visionary who may hold the cards to our future
Artificial general intelligence, in which computers have human-level cognitive abilities, is just five to 10 years away, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis predicted in an interview with 60 Minutes. AI is on track to understand the world in nuanced ways, to be embedded in everyday lives and to not just solve important problems, but also develop a sense of imagination as companies race to advance the technology, Hassabis said. "It's moving incredibly fast," Hassabis said. "I think we are on some kind of exponential curve of improvement. Of course, the success of the field in the last few years has attracted even more attention, more resources, more talent. So that's adding to the, to this exponential progress." Hassabis, who co-founded DeepMind, is one of the early pioneers of AI. Google acquired DeepMind in 2014 . "What's always guided me and, and the passion I've always had is understanding the world around us," Hassabis said. "That's what's driven me in my career. I've always been, since I was a kid, fascinated by the biggest questions. You know, the meaning of life, the nature of consciousness, the nature of reality itself." To find answers to those questions, Hassabis studied at Cambridge, MIT and Harvard. He's a computer scientist with a doctorate in neuroscience. "I've loved reading about all the great scientists who worked on these problems and the philosophers, and I wanted to see if we could advance human knowledge," Hassabis said. "And for me, my expression of doing that was to build what I think is the ultimate tool for advancing human knowledge, which is AI." His work on AI led to a Nobel Prize . The 48-year-old British scientist had worked with colleague John Jumper to create an AI model that predicted the structure of proteins. Mapping one protein could take years.. DeepMind's AI model predicted the structure of 200 million proteins in one year. AI has progressed incredibly quickly in recent years, Hassabis said. It's challenging to keep up with the advances, even for people in the field. Part of that progress includes DeepMind's Project Astra, an AI companion of sorts that can see, hear and chat about anything known to humanity. Astra is part of a new generation of chatbots, able to interpret the world with its own "eyes." Correspondent Scott Pelley tested Astra by showing the AI app artworks selected by 60 Minutes. Astra identified the paintings and answered questions about them. The AI even created a story about "Automat" by Edward Hopper. "It's a chilly evening in the city. A Tuesday, perhaps. The woman, perhaps named Eleanor, sits alone in the diner," Astra said. "She is feeling melancholy due to the uncertainty of her future and the weight of unfulfilled dreams." Hassabis said he's often surprised by what AI systems can do and say because the programs are sent out onto the internet for months to learn for themselves, then can return with unexpected skills. "We have theories about what kinds of capabilities these systems will have. That's obviously what we try to build into the architectures," he said. "But at the end of the day, how it learns, what it picks up from the data, is part of the training of these systems. We don't program that in. It learns like a human being would learn. So new capabilities or properties can emerge from that training situation." Now Google DeepMind is training its AI model "Gemini" to act in the world, like booking tickets or ordering online. Robotics will also be part of advancing AI, leading to machines that can understand the world around them, reason through instructions and follow them to completion. "I think it will have a breakthrough moment in the next couple of years where we'll have demonstrations of maybe humanoid robots or other types of robots that can start really doing useful things," Hassabis said. None of the AI systems out there today feel self-aware or conscious in any way, Hassabis said. Self-awareness is a possibility down the line, but it's not an explicit goal for Hassabis. "My advice would be to build intelligent tools first and then use them to help us advance neuroscience before we cross the threshold of thinking about things like self-awareness," he said. Hassabis also says AI is lacking in imagination. "I think that's getting at the idea of what's still missing from these systems," Hassabis said. "They're still the kind of, you can still think of them as the average of all the human knowledge that's out there. That's what they've learned on. They still can't really yet go beyond asking a new novel question or a new novel conjecture or coming up with a new hypothesis that has not been thought of before." While the technology rapidly develops, Hassabis sees the potential for enormous benefits. With the help of AI, Hassabis said he believes the end of disease could be within reach in the next decade. Hassabis has AI blazing through solutions to drug development. "So on average, it takes, you know, 10 years and billions of dollars to design just one drug," Hassabis said. "We can maybe reduce that down from years to maybe months or maybe even weeks." He also believes AI could lead to "radical abundance," the elimination of scarcity. Hassabis also feels AI needs guardrails- safety limits built into the system. One of his main fears is that bad actors may use AI for harmful ends, something that's already happening with some AI systems. Another concern is ensuring control of AI as the systems become more autonomous and more powerful. As technology companies compete for AI dominance, there's also a concern that safety may not be a priority. Making sure safety limits are built into AI requires leading players and countries to coordinate, he said. AI systems can also, Hassabis believes, be taught morality. "They learn by demonstration. They learn by teaching," Hassabis said. "And I think that's one of the things we have to do with these systems, is to give them a value system and a guidance, and some guardrails around that, much in the way that you would teach a child."
