[2][3] He is also known for his academic work on artificial general intelligence, including his thesis supervised by Marcus Hutter.
[6] Also in 1996, he obtained his MSc degree with a thesis entitled "Solomonoff Induction", with Cristian S. Calude at the University of Auckland.
[7][8] In the early 2000s, Legg re-introduced and popularized with Ben Goertzel the term "artificial general intelligence" (AGI), to describe an AI that can do practically any cognitive task a human can do.
[11][12] Before his PhD and before cofounding DeepMind, Shane Legg worked at "a number of software development positions at private companies", including the "big data firm Adaptive Intelligence"[13] and the startup WebMind founded by Ben Goertzel.
[15] 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.