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2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth about AI: 1. How to Build an Intelligent Machine
Professor Mike Wooldridge asks: what is artificial intelligence? He compares how AI works and learns with how the human brain functions. \n\nExploring the roots of AI, Mike reveals how Alan Turing devised the Imitation Game – a test of whether a machine answering a series of questions could pass as a human. The audience in the lecture theatre play a real-life version of the game to find out if AI can pass this test today. \n\nIn this lecture, Mike examines real-life neurons in action and explains how artificial neural networks are inspired by neural structures in the brain. To demonstrate how AI learns, we watch drones as they are trained to recognise and fly through structures in the lecture theatre autonomously. \n \nAI exploded into the public consciousness in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT and boasts around 100 million monthly users. Mike unravels the mystery of how large language models like ChatGPT work, and he finds out if one day this technology - along with a whole suite of different AI tools - will allow us to understand the animals we share this planet with. \n\nThe Christmas Lectures are the most prestigious event in the Royal Institution calendar, dating from 1825, when Michael Faraday founded the series. They are the world’s longest running science television series and always promise to inspire and amaze each year through explosive demonstrations and interactive experiments with the live theatre audience.
Source: BBC 4
Most recent episodes of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2025: Maggie Aderin-pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 3. To The Stars And Beyond
In her final lecture, Maggie takes her audience beyond our solar system, deep into the Milky Way galaxy, and yet further out into the universe, where the chances of finding life ...
30-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2025: Maggie Aderin-pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 2. Searching The Solar System
In this lecture, Maggie continues her journey, this time in a search for life in the rest of our solar system. From the ancient Greeks’ first observations of 'planetai' (w ...
29-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2025: Maggie Aderin-pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 1. Destination Moon
Scientists in 2025 detected the 'strongest hint yet' of biological activity outside our solar system on exoplanet K2-18b, sparking growing excitement about the real possibility ...
28-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 1. From Taste Buds To Toilet
Dr Chris van Tulleken follows the extraordinary journey food takes through our bodies – from the very first moment we see and smell a potential meal... until it finally em ...
25-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 3. The Big Food Hack
What did the very first meal on earth look like? To begin his third and final Christmas Lecture in an explosive fashion, Dr Chris van Tulleken takes us back more than four billi ...
31-12-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 2. How Food Makes Us
In this lecture, Dr Chris van Tulleken investigates how we get energy from our food and how what we eat makes us who we are. He reveals how combustion engines get their energy i ...
30-12-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth About Ai: 3. The Future Of Ai: Dream Or A Nightmare?
Professor Mike Wooldridge grapples with the future of AI in the third and final Christmas lecture. \n\nMike takes a ride in a driverless car. Autonomous vehicles, once a science ...
04-01-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth About Ai: 2. My Ai Life
Professor Mike Wooldridge reveals the huge role AI already plays in our daily lives – sometimes without us even realising its role. \n\nMike investigates how games like ch ...
03-01-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth About Ai: 1. How To Build An Intelligent Machine
Professor Mike Wooldridge asks: what is artificial intelligence? He compares how AI works and learns with how the human brain functions. \n\nExploring the roots of AI, Mike reve ...
02-01-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2022: Dame Sue Black: 3. Living Body
The final lecture in the series begins with a ‘heist’. A jewel thief steals a precious man-made diamond from the Royal Institution’s collection. Can forensic e ...
28-09-2023
BBC 4
Most popular episodes of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2025: Maggie Aderin-pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 1. Destination Moon
Scientists in 2025 detected the 'strongest hint yet' of biological activity outside our solar system on exoplanet K2-18b, sparking growing excitement about the real possibility ...
28-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2025: Maggie Aderin-pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 2. Searching The Solar System
In this lecture, Maggie continues her journey, this time in a search for life in the rest of our solar system. From the ancient Greeks’ first observations of 'planetai' (w ...
29-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth About Ai: 3. The Future Of Ai: Dream Or A Nightmare?
Professor Mike Wooldridge grapples with the future of AI in the third and final Christmas lecture. \n\nMike takes a ride in a driverless car. Autonomous vehicles, once a science ...
04-01-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2025: Maggie Aderin-pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 3. To The Stars And Beyond
In her final lecture, Maggie takes her audience beyond our solar system, deep into the Milky Way galaxy, and yet further out into the universe, where the chances of finding life ...
30-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2021: 2. The Perfect Storm
Professor Jonathan Van-Tam uncovers what drives a virus to world domination and reveals how maths may be the secret weapon to thwart it. Joined by airborne infection expert Prof ...
29-12-2021
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2022: Dame Sue Black: 1. Dead Body
Professor Sue Black has been dubbed the ‘corpse whisperer’ for her role in deciphering the messages hidden within a dead body. In this first lecture in the Royal Ins ...
13-09-2023
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 2. How Food Makes Us
In this lecture, Dr Chris van Tulleken investigates how we get energy from our food and how what we eat makes us who we are. He reveals how combustion engines get their energy i ...
30-12-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2016: Supercharged - Fuelling The Future: 3. Fully Charged
28-12-2016
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2017: The Language Of Life: 2. Silent Messages
In this second lecture, Professor Sophie Scott explores the world of silent communication in the animal kingdom and the human world - showing how much we can actually say withou ...
27-12-2017
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2016: Supercharged - Fuelling The Future: 1. Let There Be Light!
26-12-2016
BBC 4