Murray Patrick Shanahan is a professor of Cognitive Robotics at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

, in the Department of Computing, and a senior scientist at

DeepMind DeepMind Technologies Limited, trading as Google DeepMind or simply DeepMind, is a British–American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Founded in the UK in 2010, it was acquired by Go ...

. He researches

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, robotics, and cognitive science.

Education

Shanahan was educated at

and completed his PhD at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

in 1987 supervised by William F. Clocksin.

Career and research

At Imperial College, in the Department of Computing, Shanahan was a postdoc from 1987 to 1991, an advanced research fellow until 1995. At Queen Mary & Westfield College, he was a senior research fellow from 1995 to 1998. Shanahan joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at Imperial, and then (in 2005) the Department of Computing, where he was promoted from Reader to Professor in 2006. Shanahan was a scientific advisor for

Alex Garland Alexander Medawar Garland (born 26 May 1970) is an English author, screenwriter, and director. He rose to prominence with his novel '' The Beach'' (1996). He received praise for writing the Danny Boyle films '' 28 Days Later'' (2002) and '' Sun ...

's 2014 film '' Ex Machina''. Garland credited Shanahan with correcting an error in Garland's initial scripts regarding the

Turing test The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1949,. Turing wrote about the ‘imitation game’ centrally and extensively throughout his 1950 text, but apparently retired the term thereafter. He referred to ‘ iste ...

. Shanahan is on the external advisory board for the Cambridge

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) is a research centre at the University of Cambridge, intended to study possible extinction-level threats posed by present or future technology. The co-founders of the centre are Huw Price (B ...

. In 2016 Shanahan and his colleagues published a proof-of-concept for "Deep Symbolic Reinforcement Learning", a specific hybrid AI architecture that combines

symbolic AI Symbolic may refer to: * Symbol, something that represents an idea, a process, or a physical entity Mathematics, logic, and computing * Symbolic computation, a scientific area concerned with computing with mathematical formulas * Symbolic dynamic ...

with

neural networks A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either Cell (biology), biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a netwo ...

, and that exhibits a form of

transfer learning Transfer learning (TL) is a technique in machine learning (ML) in which knowledge learned from a task is re-used in order to boost performance on a related task. For example, for image classification, knowledge gained while learning to recogniz ...

. In 2017, citing "the potential (brain drain) on academia of the current tech hiring frenzy" as an issue of concern, Shanahan negotiated a joint position at Imperial College London and DeepMind. ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 185 ...

'' and ''

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'' have characterized Shanahan as an influential researcher.

Books

In 2010, Shanahan published ''Embodiment and the inner life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds'', a book that helped inspire the 2014 film ''Ex Machina''. The book argues that cognition revolves around a process of "inner rehearsal" by an embodied entity working to predict the consequences of its physical actions. In 2015, Shanahan published ''The Technological Singularity'', which runs through various scenarios following the invention of an artificial intelligence that makes better versions of itself and rapidly outcompetes humans. The book aims to be an evenhanded primer on the issues surrounding superhuman intelligence. Shanahan takes the view that we do not know how superintelligences will behave: whether they will be friendly or hostile, predictable or inscrutable. Shanahan also authored ''Solving the Frame Problem'' (MIT Press, 1997) and co-authored ''Search, Inference and Dependencies in Artificial Intelligence'' (Ellis Horwood, 1989).

Views

Shanahan said in 2014 about existential risks from AI that "The AI community does not think it's a substantial worry, whereas the public does think it's much more of an issue. The right place to be is probably in-between those two extremes." He added that "it's probably a good idea for AI researchers to start thinking (now) about the (

existential risk A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, endangering or even destroying Modernity, modern civilization. Existential risk is a related term limited to even ...

) issues that

Stephen Hawking Stephen William Hawking (8January 194214March 2018) was an English theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Between ...

and others have raised." Shanahan said in 2018 that there was no need to panic yet about an

AI takeover An AI takeover is an imagined scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) emerges as the dominant form of intelligence on Earth and computer programs or robots effectively take control of the planet away from the human species, which relies o ...

because multiple conceptual breakthroughs would be needed for

artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI)—sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI—is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Some researchers argue that sta ...

(AGI), and "it is impossible to know when (AGI) might be achievable". He stated that AGI would come hand-in-hand with true understanding, enabling for example safer automated vehicles and medical diagnosis applications. In 2020, Shanahan characterized AI as lacking the

common sense Common sense () is "knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument". As such, it is often considered to represent the basic level of sound practical judgement or know ...

of a human child.

References

External links

A two-minute lecture on AI
by Shanahan (BBC, 2014)
Presentation on AI
at the University of Dublin (2018) {{DEFAULTSORT:Shanahan, Murray Living people Artificial intelligence researchers Academics of the Department of Computing, Imperial College London Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Year of birth missing (living people)