Shane Legg

Legg attended Rotorua Lakes High School in Rotorua, on New Zealand's North Island.[3] He completed his undergraduate studies at Waikato University. He obtained his MSc degree with the thesis "Solomonoff Induction"[4] with Cristian S. Calude at the University of Auckland. He received his PhD degree from University of Lugano working on theoretical models of super intelligent machines (AIXI) with Prof. Marcus Hutter. His doctoral thesis entitled "Machine Super Intelligence"[5] was completed in 2008. He was awarded the $10,000 Canadian Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence prize.[6]

Legg's main research interests are in artificial intelligence, both theory and practice. In particular, he is interested in measures of intelligence for machines, neural networks, artificial evolution, reinforcement learning and the theory of learning. He has worked on these topics in both commercial and academic environments.

In 2010, Legg cofounded the start-up DeepMind Technologies along with Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman.[1][2] Hassabis and Legg first met at UCL's Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit,[7] where Legg was a research associate.

Legg was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to the science and technology sector and to investment.[8]