In the Blink of an Eye • 2016 • episode "S1E3" • Invisible Universe

59:00

Mike Wooldridge reveals the huge role AI already plays in our daily lives – sometimes without us even realising its role. Mike investigates how games like chess and Go have become a training ground for AI, helping to bring about key advances we are now seeing in the field, and he reveals how simple methods of learning, like rewarding success, have been used to train AI in spectacular ways. We also feature some of the revolutionary innovations that AI has brought about in healthcare, from the use of AI tools in planning cancer treatment, to monitoring Parkinson's. Mike is joined by members of DeepMind's AlphaFold team, who use AI to predict the structures of large numbers of proteins, which will revolutionise the creation of new drugs across the world. We also reveal the huge impact AI has had on our creative lives – as it is able to write songs and create artworks in seconds. With the help of artist Eric Drass (aka shardcore), the audience creates a collaborative artwork and discovers how image generation works. Mike explores the thorny question of who the creator is – the AI itself, the human who set it to work, or the creators of the art that AI has learned from? The 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.

S1E2 • BBC Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: The Truth about AI • 2023 • Technology

42:56

What if aliens landed on Earth? Much of science fiction explores the moment of first contact – what will people do when the aliens land? From H. G. Wells’ pioneering The War of the Worlds to Independence Day, Men in Black, and District 9, Invasion deals with our fears of alien invasions of earth. David Tennant explains the appeal of Doctor Who’s Daleks and Cybermen while John Carpenter and Chris Carter explore the rich appeal of the paranoia fuelled by hidden aliens with The Thing and The X-Files. It also asks what if the monsters were our own creation? With the aid of rarely seen animation tests, Phil Tippett takes us behind the scenes in the creation of the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. But not all invasions are hostile. Peter Coyote and Richard Dreyfuss discuss the creation of Spielberg’s spellbinding classics E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There is more than one kind of invasion.

Part 3 • The Real History of Science Fiction • 2014 • Technology

44:00

It's July 20, 1969. Four days after Apollo 11 thundered skyward from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to set foot upon the moon, thanks to a marvel of engineering: the lunar module. It's the culmination of years of toil and millions of man-hours of engineering prowess. This is the story of the unsung heroes who built the unconventional flying machines that carried 12 Americans to the moon on six separate missions and made the dream of a generation come true.

S1E2 • America's Secret Space Heroes • 2017 • Technology

20:26

We explore the hidden history and super science of the wrist watch, the digital watch and the prosthetic leg.

2/10 • Incredible Inventions • 2017 • Technology

54:51

Explore how Artificial Intelligence will change your job as new research shows how much of what you do could be done by robots. From truckers to lawyers & doctors, we bring affected workers face to face with AI experts. How can we prepare for the coming changes to the world economy?

2018 • Technology

24:18

The Sun is our star. Its energy enables life on the Earth to thrive yet we know so little about the solar weather and the 11-year solar cycle. Modern technology can be adversely affected by giant coronal mass ejections and there appears to be a link between sunspot activity and climatic conditions.

S1E8 • Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration • 2021 • Technology