How AlphaChip Revolutionized Chip Design at Google | Anna Goldie

Anna Goldie – Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and co-lead of AlphaChip, the groundbreaking project that used reinforcement learning for chip design (Nature cover publication). Her career bridges disciplines—starting in linguistics and computer science at MIT, earning her PhD at Stanford, and nearly a decade at Google Brain, where she co-founded the ML for Systems team with Azalia Mirhoseini. Anna shares how her early curiosity in linguistics sparked a career at the intersection of AI and systems. From building dialogue systems at MIT, to working on Google’s moonshot projects like Amy and Small Talk, to pioneering deep reinforcement learning approaches for chip design, her path reflects both adaptability and vision. References Anna Goldie –   / adgoldie   Jing Conan Wang (Host) –   / jingconan   FounderCoHo –   / foundercoho   Timestamps 00:00 – Highlights 01:10 – Introduction and Interview Focus 02:35 – Early Days & MIT Journey 08:16 – Google research team 11:00 – Joining Google Brain during the golden age 15:13 – Brilliant Minds behind Leadership 17:02 – Early Projects and Collaboration 19:50 – Moonshot Program 23:21 – Collaboration with Azalia on device placement 28:02 – Chip Design, Academic and Industry Research 32:16 – Meeting Jeff Dean 39:05 – Bridging software and hardware at Google Brain 43:16 – The foundations that led to AlphaChip 45:49 – Outro