The first SuperDataScience episode filmed with a live audience! Award-winning researcher Dr. Noam Brown from Meta AI was the guest, filling us in on A.I. systems that beat the world's best at poker and other games.

We shot this episode on stage at MLconf in New York. This means that you’ll hear audience reactions in real-time and, near the end of the episode, many great questions from audience members once I opened the floor up to them.

This episode has some moments here and there that get deep into the weeds of machine learning theory, but for the most part today’s episode will appeal to anyone who’s interested in understanding the absolute cutting-edge of A.I. capabilities today.

In this episode, Noam details:
• What Meta AI (formerly Facebook AI Research) is, how it fits into Meta.
• His award-winning no-limit poker-playing algorithms.
• What game theory is and how he integrates it into his models.
• The algorithm he recently developed that can beat the world’s best players at “no-press” Diplomacy, a complex strategy board game.
• The real-world implications of his game-playing A.I. breakthroughs.
• Why he became a researcher at a big tech firm instead of academia.

Noam:
• Develops A.I. systems that can defeat the best humans at complex games that computers have hitherto been unable to succeed at.
• During his Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, developed A.I. systems that defeated the top human players of no-limit poker — earning him a Science Magazine cover story.
• Also holds a master’s in robotics from Carnegie Mellon and a bachelor’s degree in math and computer science from Rutgers.
• Previously worked for DeepMind and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board.

Thanks to Alexander Holden Miller for introducing me to Noam and to Hannah Gräfin von Waldersee for introducing me to Alex!

The SuperDataScience show's available on all major podcasting platforms, YouTube, and at SuperDataScience.com.