Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web • 2017

42:06

Rolls-Royce is not only a legendary automotive brand, they're also one of the largest manufacturers of aircraft engines producing the revolutionary Trent XWB, one of the world's most powerful, efficient and eco-friendly jet engines.

S1E7 • Super Factories • 2020 • Technology

88:29

Documentary which tells the story of the most ambitious project ever conceived on the internet and the people who tried to stop it. In 1937 HG Wells predicted the creation of the 'world brain', a giant global library that contained all human knowledge which would lead to a new form of higher intelligence. 70 years later the realisation of that dream was under way, as Google scanned millions of books for its Google Books website. However, over half those books were still in copyright and authors across the world launched a campaign to stop them, climaxing in a New York courtroom in 2011. A film about the dreams, dilemmas and dangers of the internet, set in spectacular locations in China, USA, Europe and Latin America.

2013 • Technology

26:09

Before spaceflight aviators began wearing pressure suits to allow them to function at higher ceilings. These aviation suits were adapted for the early Cosmonauts and Astronauts but as requirements became more demanding spacesuit design became more elaborate.

S1E6 • Zenith: Advances in Space Exploration • 2021 • Technology

44:28

Costing $150 billion, the International Space Station is the most expensive structure humans have ever built. In this episode, using the series' signature photo-real computer graphics, we take it apart to uncover the extraordinary innovations that enable it to support life in the deadly vacuum of space.

S1E1 • Superstructures Engineering Marvels • 2019 • Technology

47:24

Enlai explores if we can truly love artificial intelligence, and teach it to love us back. He meets impassioned love robots and chatbots trained on memories of people, living and dead.

S1E1 • Becoming Human • 2020 • Technology

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