DNN 7: Reinforcement Learning | Research at Waymo, University of Oxford // Shimon Whiteson
About
In the seventh episode of Deep Neural Notebooks, I interview Shimon Whiteson.
Shimon is a Computer Science Professor at the University of Oxford, where he leads the Whiteson Research Lab. He is also a Data Scientist at Waymo (formerly the Google Self Driving Car Project). His research specialises in Reinforcement Learning (RL), Cooperative Multi-Agent RL, to be precise.
We talk about
So this interview is all in the context of Reinforcement Learning. We talk about his journey - how he started with Machine Learning & RL. I ask him about his thoughts on the state of RL - about how the field has progressed and changed since he started, about how it has become so popular in the last few years, and about the challenges being faced.
We also talk about his research at Waymo, about recent projects from his lab, and about the scope and future of telepresence robots, one of which was developed under his guidance. We also talk about the infamous Reward Hypothesis in the context of RL and Philosophy. In the end, he also shares some advice for people starting out with RL.
Links: Youtube / Anchor.fm / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
