Three years ago, artificial intelligence research firm DeepMind was acquired by Google for a reported £400m. As part of the acquisition, Google agreed to set up an ethics and safety board to ensure that its AI technology is not abused. The existence of the ethics board wasn't confirmed at the time of the acquisition announcement, and the public only became aware of it through a leak to industry news site The Information. But in the years since, senior members of DeepMind have publicly confirmed the board's existence, arguing that it is one of the ways that the company is trying to "lead the way" on ethical issues in AI. But in all that time DeepMind has consistently refused to say who is on the board, what it discusses, or publicly confirm whether or not it has even officially met. The Guardian has asked DeepMind and Google multiple times since the acquisition on 26 January 2014 for transparency around the board, and received just one answer on the record.

A number of research organizations are working to create artificial intelligence systems capable of developing machine-learning software. Several research organizations, including Google Brain and DeepMind, are working to create artificial intelligences (AI) that can in turn develop machine-learning software. In many cases, the results coming from machines programming other machines match or exceed work done by humans. If self-programming AI techniques become practical, they could increase the pace at which machine learning is adopted throughout the economy without requiring more machine-learning experts, who already are in short supply. One set of experiments from DeepMind suggests self-teaching methods could alleviate the problem of AI software needing to consume massive amounts of data on a specific task.

DeepMind is known internationally as a leader in an area of computer science called machine learning. Now senior DeepMind staff are joining forces with UCL's Department of Computer Science to share their knowledge by delivering a state-of-the-art Master's level training module called'Advanced Topics in Machine Learning'. This new module will provide a key component of UCL's Machine Learning Master's programmes and will cover some of the most sophisticated topics in artificial intelligence. The first of these lectures will take place in January 2017. The course focuses on deep learning and reinforcement learning, and will be led by DeepMind's Thore Graepel, who also holds a UCL professorship.

I ask 67 questions to OpenAI Engineer Catherine Olsson as we take a stroll around OpenAI HQ in San Francisco. Catherine graciously agreed to an interview right after the release of OpenAI's Universe. I ask her questions that range from her deepest fears to her favorite Operating System. Please hit that subscribe button if you liked this interview! That's what keeps me going.

Arguably, the open source movement -- the idea that a group of technologists freely contributing their own work and commenting on the work of others, can create a final product that is comparable with anything that a commercial enterprise might create -- has been one of the great innovation catalysts of the technology industry. It's no wonder, then, that a group of Silicon Valley luminaries -- including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman -- have lined up to contribute $1 billion to a new open-source AI project known as OpenAI that is led by Ilya Sutskever, one of the world's top experts in machine learning. For now, we don't really know. The OpenAI website is basically just a single blog post outlining the organization's manifesto and an "About" page detailing all the technologists and engineers working on the project. Thus far, we only have a long announcement from the founding members that they are going to do something amazing.

In this handout image provided by Google, South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol reviews the match with other professional Go players after the fourth match against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match on March 13, 2016 in Seoul. Lee Sedol and DeepMind brought vastly different brains to their five-game Go match at a Seoul hotel this past week -- one made of flesh and blood and the other of bits and metal. Yet the South Korean and the artificial intelligence machine from Google's U.K. unit earned their respective victories in a Four Seasons meeting room thanks in part to a common tactic: Surprise. In doing so, both played an ancient Asian game according to an ancient Asian maxim. "The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy," Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War.

In this handout image provided by Google, South Korean professional Go player Lee Se-Dol puts his first stone against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, during the third Google DeepMind Challenge Match on March 12, 2016 in Seoul, South Korea. SAN FRANCISCO -- IBM's Watson computer now has company at beating humans in very complicated games. Google's artificial intelligence machine, called DeepMind, this week defeated a human champion three straight times at the ancient board game of Go. The feat has been viewed widely as a huge breakthrough in artificial intelligence, one that intensifies the high-stakes race among tech giants to develop ever-smarter machines. "DeepMind is doing what appears to be thinking -- that's what has everybody jazzed," says Jonathan Crane, chief commercial officer of IPsoft, a startup that makes an AI-based customer-service product.

What next for Google's DeepMind, now that the company has mastered the ancient board game of Go, beating the Korean champion Lee Se-Dol 4–1 this month? A paper from two UCL researchers suggests one future project: playing poker. And unlike Go, victory in that field could probably fund itself – at least until humans stopped playing against the robot. The paper's authors are Johannes Heinrich, a research student at UCL, and David Silver, a UCL lecturer who is working at DeepMind. Silver, who was AlphaGo's main programmer, has been called the "unsung hero at Google DeepMind", although this paper relates to his work at UCL.

Demis Hassabis has a modest demeanour and an unassuming countenance, but he is deadly serious when he tells me he is on a mission to "solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else". Coming from almost anyone else, the statement would be laughable; from him, not so much. Hassabis is the 39-year-old former chess master and video-games designer whose artificial intelligence research start-up, DeepMind, was bought by Google in 2014 for a reported $625 million. He is the son of immigrants, attended a state comprehensive in Finchley and holds degrees from Cambridge and UCL in computer science and cognitive neuroscience. A "visionary" manager, according to those who work with him, Hassabis also reckons he has found a way to "make science research efficient" and says he is leading an "Apollo programme for the 21st century". He's the sort of normal-looking bloke you wouldn't look twice at on the street, but Tim Berners-Lee once described him to me as one of the smartest human beings on the planet. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, of course, every time we interrogate Siri or get a recommendation on Android. And in the short term, Google products will surely benefit from Hassabis's research, even if improvements in personalisation, search, YouTube, and speech and facial recognition are not presented as "AI" as such. "It's just stuff that works.") In the longer term, though, the technology he is developing is about more than emotional robots and smarter phones.

There can't be many events where Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European commission, rubs shoulders with Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon, or Google bon vivant Eric Schmidt with the reliably delightful Grayson Perry. For the one percenters who get an invitation to Founders Forum, the event is like the Davos of the tech industry. For an observer, the atmosphere combines the congratulatory backslapping of intense power network with an undercurrent of feisty rivalry. Secrets are told, processes explained, deals done late at night over very expensive drinks. There are modest panel discussions (not everyone goes; the best discussions are alwaysin the corridors, near the bar or clustered under an accommodating willow tree in the grounds), but even these sessions open the kimono a little wider than usual. There have been few recent tech acquisitions more intriguing than that of DeepMind, the British artificial intelligence firm bought by Google for about £400m in January.