Shane Legg is a

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

research director and

digital technology Digital technology may refer to: * Application of digital electronics * Any significant piece of knowledge from information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange al ...

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

who did an AI-related postdoctoral fellowship at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit Gatsby may refer to: * ''The Great Gatsby'', a 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald ** The Great Gatsby (disambiguation), an index of film adaptations of the novel ** Jay Gatsby, the novel's central character Other uses * Gatsby cap, a hat with a ...

, after doctoral work at the Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale (IDSIA, Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research) working on theoretical models of super-intelligent machines under

Marcus Hutter Marcus Hutter (born April 14, 1967 in Munich) is DeepMind Senior Scientist researching the mathematical foundations of artificial general intelligence. He is on leave from his professorship at the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Scie ...

. He left academia to join

Demis Hassabis Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur. In his early career he was a video game AI programmer and designer, and an expert player of board games. He is the chief executive officer and ...

and

Mustafa Suleyman Mustafa Suleyman (born August 1984) is the co-founder and former head of applied AI at DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company acquired by Google and now owned by Alphabet. His current venture is Inflection AI. Early life Suleyman's fath ...

in cofounding the

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

and

artificial Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotations Artificiality ...

intelligence-focused startup,

DeepMind Technologies DeepMind Technologies is a British artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and research laboratory founded in 2010. DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, after Google's restru ...

, which was acquired by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

in 2014. As of August 2022, Legg remained at Google's DeepMind subsidiary, in the role of Chief Scientist.

Early life and education

Legg attended

Rotorua Lakes High School Rotorua Lakes High School, commonly known as Lakes High, or simply Lakes, is a state school educating boys and girls from Year 9 to Year 13. It is situated in Owhata, in the eastern suburbs of Rotorua, New Zealand, and draws many of its students f ...

Rotorua Rotorua () is a city in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand's North Island. The city lies on the southern shores of Lake Rotorua, from which it takes its name. It is the seat of the Rotorua Lakes District, a territorial authority encompass ...

, on

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

. He completed his undergraduate studies at

Waikato University , mottoeng = For The People , established = 1964; years ago , endowment = (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $263.6 million (31 December 2020) , chancellor = Sir Anand Satyanand, GNZM, QSO, KStJ , vice_chancellor = Neil Quigley , city ...

. He obtained his MSc degree with a thesis entitled "Solomonoff Induction", with

Cristian S. Calude Cristian Sorin Calude (born 21 April 1952) is a Romanian-New Zealander mathematician and computer scientist. Biography After graduating from the Vasile Alecsandri National College in Galați, he studied at the University of Bucharest, where he ...

at the

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

. He did his PhD work at the Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale (IDSIA), an joint affiliate of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI, University of Lugano) and Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana (SUPSI, University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland), working on theoretical models of super intelligent machines (

AIXI AIXI is a theoretical mathematical formalism for artificial general intelligence. It combines Solomonoff induction with sequential decision theory. AIXI was first proposed by Marcus Hutter in 2000 and several results regarding AIXI are proved ...

) with

; his doctoral thesis entitled "Machine Super Intelligence" was completed in 2008. He then went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship in finance at USI, and began a further fellowship at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

Research interests

Legg's main research interests are in artificial intelligence, in both theory and practice. In particular, he is interested in measures of intelligence for machines,

neural networks A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

artificial evolution In computational intelligence (CI), an evolutionary algorithm (EA) is a subset of evolutionary computation, a generic population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. An EA uses mechanisms inspired by biological evolution, such as reprod ...

reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...

and the theory of learning. He has worked on these topics in both commercial and academic environments.

Career

After Legg's academic years—where the fellowship positions, while still having elements of training, can be viewed as his first career positions—he at first went onto "a number of software development positions at private companies", including the "big data firm Adaptive Intelligence".

DeepMind Technologies

Founding

In 2010, Legg cofounded the start-up

along with

and

. Hassabis and Legg first met at UCL's

, where Legg was a research associate.

Achievements

Legg's achievements at DeepMind have included many productive, ongoing projects, and regarding these, company reports and publications arising from the project developmentand staff oversight doing the applied industrial AI research that is the companies focus.

Roles

As of August 2022, Legg remained at Google's DeepMind subsidiary, in the role of Chief Scientist.

Awards and honors

Legg was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(CBE) in the

2019 Birthday Honours The 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 16 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as ...

for services to the science and technology sector and to investment. It has been reported in an introduction to an email interview at a self-published blog site that Legg was awarded the $10,000 prize of the Canadian Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence for his PhD dissertation. For the source of the quote — and the website user page identifying LessWrong.com blogger "XiXiDu" as Alexander Kruel — se
this link

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Legg, Shane Living people Machine learning researchers Artificial intelligence researchers New Zealand expatriates in England University of Waikato alumni University of Auckland alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Commanders of the Order of the British Empire