Kellin Pelrine - How He Crushed A Superhuman Go-Playing AI 14 Games To 1 #34
Our guest today is Kellin Pelrine, Research Scientist at FAR AI and Doctoral Researcher at the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute (MILA).
In our conversation, Kellin first explains how he defeated a superhuman Go-playing AI engine named KataGo 14 games to 1. We talk about KataGo’s weaknesses and discuss how Kellin managed to identify them using Reinforcement Learning.
In the second part of the episode, we dive into Kellin’s research on building practical AI systems. We dig into his work on misinformation detection and political polarisation and discuss why building stronger models isn’t always enough to get real world impact.
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Follow Kellin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellin-pelrine/
Follow Neil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leiserneil/————
(00:00) - Intro
(01:54) - How Kellin got into the field
(03:23) - The game of Go
(06:10) - Lee Sedol vs AlphaGo
(11:42) - How Kellin defeated KataGo 14 -1
(26:24) - Using AI to detect KataGo’s weaknesses
(37:07) - Kellin’s research on building practical AI systems
(43:10) - Misinformation detection
(49:22) - Political polarisation
(54:39) - ML in Academia vs in Industry
(1:06:03) - Career Advice
AI Stories
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science and Deep Learning are completely changing the world we live in today. Companies around the world start to make sensible use of big data to influence business decisions and create our future. From video recommendations to autonomous driving, from stock prediction to weather forecasting, the AI revolution is everywhere. The AI stories podcast brings together some of the best Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, Business leaders and researchers that are at the front of this revolution. They are here to talk about their career, how they arrive where they are, give advice and share their vision. They explain how they make use of AI in their daily routine, how they use algorithms to solve business problems and make the world a better place. They are here to share their stories: their AI stories. Hosted by Neil Leiser, Data Scientist at Iwoca. Follow Neil to learn more about career, Data Science, AI and Machine Learning. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leiserneil/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeiserNeil
- No. of episodes: 60
- Latest episode: 2025-04-24
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