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RL Course by David Silver - Lecture 1: Introduction to Reinforcement Learning

Google DeepMind · course · Watch on YouTube

Machine learning & deep learningUniversity lectures & courses

What it is

The first lecture of David Silver's reinforcement learning course, introducing the field and its basic concepts. The course follows the Sutton and Barto textbook.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Frequently recommended as an excellent, clear introductory RL course from the lead of AlphaGo, pairing well with Sutton and Barto.

  • 9 people recommended it
  • 9 different months
  • 2 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “Really clear explanations that went hand in hand when I was reading Sutton and Barto's introductory book.”

    Clear RL explanations pairing well with Sutton and Barto

    colmvp, 2020-04 · Strong recommendation · in “ACM Prize in Computing Awarded to AlphaGo Developer”

  2. “this intro course from David Silver (Deep Mind) is excellent”

    Excellent introductory RL course for those wanting depth

    briandw, 2025-06 · Strong recommendation · in “Q-learning is not yet scalable”

  3. “David Silver's Reinforcement Course is based on Sutton & Barto”

    Course based on Sutton and Barto's RL book

    deepnet, 2017-03 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Best books on AI?”

  4. “You can check this Reinforcement Learning Course by David Silver on YouTube”

    Reinforcement learning course by AlphaZero lead

    magoghm, 2017-12 · Recommendation · in “Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with General Reinforcement Learning”

  5. “DeepMind. Reinforcement Learning Course by David Silver[4]”

    One of several recommended ML course resources

    igravious, 2018-01 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Best introductory video courses on ML and Deep Learning?”

  6. “I would also like to suggest these lessons”

    Lessons by AlphaGo contributor David Silver

    crisbal_, 2018-05 · Recommendation · in “Reinforcement Learning – Bandit Problems”

  7. “There is a great RL course on YouTube by David Silver”

    Introductory RL course that reframes philosophy of mind through agents, rewards and environments

    visarga, 2018-11 · Recommendation · in “Philosophy Has Made Plenty of Progress”

  8. “Dave's UCL Course on RL[2] is great too”

    Full lecture playlist on RL from a DeepMind researcher

    alkhatib, 2019-02 · Recommendation · in “Dopamine framework: Fast prototyping of reinforcement learning algorithms (2018)”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: reinforcement learning, david silver, deepmind, sutton and barto, machine learning

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