Playing Pod: Our Top 5 AI Podcast Episodes of 2019

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with AI.

2019 was the year deep-learning driven AI made the leap from the rarefied world of elite computer scientists and the world’s biggest web companies to the rest of us.

Everyone from startups to hobbyists to researchers are picking up powerful GPUs and putting this new kind of computing to work. And they’re doing amazing things.

And with NVIDIA’s AI Podcast, now in its third year, we’re bringing the people behind these wonders to more listeners than ever, with the podcast reaching more than 650,000 downloads in 2019.

Here are the episodes that were listener favorites in 2019.

A Man, a GAN, and a 1080 Ti: How Jason Antic Created ‘De-Oldify’

You don’t need to be an academic or to work for a big company to get into deep learning. You can just be a guy with a NVIDIA GeForce 1080 Ti and a generative adversarial network. Jason Antic, who describes himself as “a software guy,” began digging deep into GANs. Next thing you know, he’s created an increasingly popular tool that colors old black-and-white shots. Interested in digging into AI for yourself? Listen and get inspired.

Sort Circuit: How GPUs Helped One Man Conquer His Lego Pile

At some point in life, every man faces the same great challenge: sorting out his children’s Lego pile. Thanks to GPU-driven deep learning, Francisco “Paco” Garcia is one of the few men who can say they’ve conquered it. Here’s how.

UC Berkeley’s Pieter Abbeel on How Deep Learning Will Help Robots Learn

Robots can do amazing things. Compare even the most advanced robots to a three-year-old, however, and they can come up short. UC Berkeley Professor Pieter Abbeel has pioneered the idea that deep learning could be the key to bridging that gap: creating robots that can learn how to move through the world more fluidly and naturally. We caught up with Abbeel, who is director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab and cofounder of Covariant AI, a Bay Area company developing AI software that makes it easy to teach robots new and complex skills, at GTC 2019.

How the Breakthrough Listen Harnessed AI in the Search for Aliens

UC Berkeley’s Gerry Zhang talks about his work using deep learning to analyze signals from space for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. And while we haven’t found aliens, yet, the doctoral student has already made some extraordinary discoveries.

How AI Helps GOAT Keep Sneakerheads a Step Ahead

GOAT Group helps sneaker enthusiasts get their hands on authentic Air Jordans, Yeezys and a variety of old-school kicks with the help of AI. Michael Hall, director of data at GOAT Group, explains how in a conversation with AI Podcast host and raging sneakerhead Noah Kravitz.