Applications of Algorithmic Information Theory

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Prof Marcus Hutter, Google DeepMind, London
• Wednesday 18 February 2026, 14:00-15:00
• MR5, CMS Pavilion A.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Varun Jog.

Algorithmic information theory has a wide range of applications, despite the fact that its core quantity, Kolmogorov complexity, is incomputable. Most importantly, AIT allows to quantify Occam’s razor, the core scientific paradigm that ”among two models that describe the data equally well, the simpler one should be preferred”. This led to universal theories of induction and action in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and practical versions like the Minimum Encoding Length (MDL/MML) principles. The universal similarity metric probably spawned the greatest practical success of AIT . Approximated by standard compressors like Lempel-Ziv (zip) or bzip2 or PPMZ , it leads to the normalized compression distance, which has been used to fully automatically reconstruct language and phylogenetic trees, and many other clustering problems. AIT has been applied in disciplines as remote as Cognitive Sciences, Biology, Physics, and Economics

Mini biography: Marcus Hutter is Senior Researcher at DeepMind and Professor in the RSCS at the Australian National University. He received his PhD and BSc in physics from the LMU in Munich and a Habilitation, MSc, and BSc in informatics from the TU Munich. Since 2000, his research at IDSIA and ANU and DeepMind has centered around the information-theoretic foundations of inductive reasoning and reinforcement learning, which has resulted in 200+ publications and several awards. His books on “Universal Artificial Intelligence” develop the first sound and complete theory of super-intelligent machines (ASI). He also runs the Human Knowledge Compression Contest (500’000€ H-prize). See https://www.hutter1.net/

This talk is part of the Information Theory Seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All CMS events
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Artificial Intelligence Research Group Talks (Computer Laboratory)
• CMS Events
• Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3)
• Cambridge Forum of Science and Humanities
• Cambridge Language Sciences
• Cambridge talks
• Chris Davis' list
• DPMMS Lists
• DPMMS info aggregator
• DPMMS lists
• Department of Computer Science and Technology talks and seminars
• Guy Emerson's list
• Hanchen DaDaDash
• Information Theory Seminar
• Interested Talks
• MR5, CMS Pavilion A
• Machine Learning
• Machine learning theory
• Martin's interesting talks
• PhD related
• School of Physical Sciences
• School of Technology
• Speech Seminars
• Statistical Laboratory info aggregator
• Statistics Group
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• bld31
• custom
• ml@cl-math
• ndk22's list
• ob366-ai4er
• rp587
• yk373's list
• yk449

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.