David Silver (born 1976) is a British computer scientist and businessman who leads the
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 ...
research group at
DeepMind
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 ...
and was lead researcher on
AlphaGo
AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go. It was developed by DeepMind Technologies a subsidiary of Google (now Alphabet Inc.). Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that competed u ...
,
AlphaZero
AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and go. This algorithm uses an approach similar to AlphaGo Zero.
On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind team r ...
and co-lead on
AlphaStar.
Education
He graduated from the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
in 1997 with the Addison-Wesley award, and befriended
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 ...
whilst there.
Silver returned to academia in 2004 at the
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Ruth ...
to study for a PhD on reinforcement learning, where he co-introduced the algorithms used in the first master-level 9×9 Go programs and graduated in 2009. His version of program ''MoGo'' (co-authored with Sylvain Gelly) was one of the strongest Go programs as of 2009.
Career
After graduating from university, Silver co-founded the video games company
Elixir Studios, where he was CTO and lead programmer, receiving several awards for technology and innovation.
Silver was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2011, and subsequently became a lecturer 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 = � ...
, where he is now a professor. His lectures on Reinforcement Learning are available on YouTube. Silver consulted for DeepMind
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 ...
from its inception, joining full-time in 2013.
His recent work has focused on combining 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 ...
with deep learning, including a program that learns to play Atari games directly from pixels. Silver led the AlphaGo project, culminating in the first program to defeat a top professional player in the full-size game of Go. AlphaGo
AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go. It was developed by DeepMind Technologies a subsidiary of Google (now Alphabet Inc.). Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that competed u ...
subsequently received an honorary 9 Dan Professional Certification; and won the Cannes Lion award for innovation. He then led development of AlphaZero
AlphaZero is a computer program developed by artificial intelligence research company DeepMind to master the games of chess, shogi and go. This algorithm uses an approach similar to AlphaGo Zero.
On December 5, 2017, the DeepMind team r ...
, which used the same AI to learn to play Go from scratch (learning only by playing itself and not from human games) before learning to play chess and shogi in the same way, to higher levels than any other computer program.
Silver is among the most published members of staff at DeepMind, with over 130,000 citations and has an ''h''-index of 78.
He was awarded the 2019 ACM Prize in Computing for breakthrough advances in computer game-playing.
In 2021, Silver was elected Fellow of the Royal Society for his contributions to Deep Q-Networks and AlphaGo
AlphaGo is a computer program that plays the board game Go. It was developed by DeepMind Technologies a subsidiary of Google (now Alphabet Inc.). Subsequent versions of AlphaGo became increasingly powerful, including a version that competed u ...
.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Silver, David
Alumni of the University of Cambridge
Computer programmers
Go (game) researchers
Living people
AlphaGo
University of Alberta alumni
Academics of University College London
1970s births
Year of birth missing (living people)