Andrew Yan-Tak Ng (; born 1976) is a British-born American
computer scientist and
technology entrepreneur focusing on
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
and
AI.
Ng was a co-founder and head of
Google Brain
Google Brain is a deep learning artificial intelligence research team under the umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence. Formed in 2011, Google Brain combines open-ended machine learning research ...
and was the former Chief Scientist at
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the l ...
, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group into a team of several thousand people.
Ng is an
adjunct professor at
Stanford University (formerly associate professor and Director of its
Stanford AI Lab
Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...
or SAIL). Ng has also made substantial contributions to the field of
online education as the co-founder of both
Coursera
Coursera Inc. () is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses ...
an
deeplearning.ai He has spearheaded many efforts to "democratize deep learning" teaching over 2.5 million students through his online courses.
He is one of the world's most famous and influential computer scientists being named one of ''Time'' magazine's
100 Most Influential People in 2012, and ''
Fast Company
''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year.
History
''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...
'' Most Creative People in 2014. In 2018, he launched and currently heads the AI Fund, initially a $175-million investment fund for backing artificial intelligence startups. He has founded Landing AI, which provides AI-powered
SaaS products.
Biography
Ng was born in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
in 1976. His parents Ronald P. Ng and
Tisa Ho are both immigrants from
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...
. He has at least one brother.
Growing up, he spent time in Hong Kong and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
and later graduated from
Raffles Institution
Raffles Institution (RI) is an independent educational institution in Singapore. Founded in 1823, it is the oldest school in the country. It provides secondary education for boys only from Year 1 to Year 4, and pre-university education for both ...
in Singapore in 1992.
In 1997, he earned his undergraduate degree with a triple major in
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...
,
statistics, and
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...
from
Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, graduating at the top of his class. Between 1996 and 1998 he also conducted research on
reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...
,
model selection
Model selection is the task of selecting a statistical model from a set of candidate models, given data. In the simplest cases, a pre-existing set of data is considered. However, the task can also involve the design of experiments such that the ...
, and
feature selection
In machine learning and statistics, feature selection, also known as variable selection, attribute selection or variable subset selection, is the process of selecting a subset of relevant features (variables, predictors) for use in model construc ...
at the
AT&T Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
.
In 1998 Ng earned his
master's degree
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...
. At MIT he built the first publicly available, automatically indexed web-search engine for research papers on the web (it was a precursor to
CiteSeer
CiteSeerX (formerly called CiteSeer) is a public search engine and digital library for scientific and academic papers, primarily in the fields of computer and information science.
CiteSeer's goal is to improve the dissemination and access of ac ...
/
ResearchIndex, but specialized in machine learning).
In 2002, he received his
PhD from the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, under the supervision of
Michael I. Jordan. His thesis is titled "Shaping and policy search in
reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...
" and is well cited to this day.
He started working as an assistant professor at
Stanford University in 2002, and as an associate professor at 2009.
He currently lives in
Los Altos Hills
Los Altos Hills (; ''Los Altos'', Spanish for "The Heights") is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 8,489 at the 2020 census. The town is known for its affluence and expensive residential rea ...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
. In 2014, he married
Carol E. Reiley
Carol Elizabeth Reiley (born 1982) is an American business executive, computer scientist, and model. She is a pioneer in teleoperated and autonomous robot systems in surgery, space exploration, disaster rescue, and self-driving cars. Reiley has w ...
. They have two children: a daughter born in 2019 and a son born in 2021. The ''
MIT Technology Review
''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...
'' named Ng and Reiley an "AI power couple".
Career
Academia and teaching
Ng is a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
at Stanford University Department of Computer Science and Department of
Electrical Engineering. He served as the director of the
Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL), where he taught students and undertook research related to
data mining,
big data, and machine learning. His machine learning course CS229 at Stanford is the most popular course offered on campus with over 1000 students enrolling some years. As of 2020, three of most popular courses on Coursera are Ng's: Machine Learning (#1), AI for Everyone, (#5), Neural Networks and Deep Learning (#6).
In 2008 his group at Stanford was one of the first in the US to start advocating the use of
GPUs
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...
in deep learning. The rationale was that an efficient computation infrastructure could speed up
statistical model training by orders of magnitude, ameliorating some of the scaling issues associated with big data. At the time it was a controversial and risky decision, but since then and following Ng's lead, GPUs have become a cornerstone in the field.
Since 2017 Ng has been advocating the shift to
high performance computing
High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems.
Overview
HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into a multi ...
(HPC) for scaling up deep learning and accelerating progress in the field.
In 2012, along with Stanford computer scientist
Daphne Koller he co-founded and was CEO of
Coursera
Coursera Inc. () is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses ...
, a website that offers free online courses to everyone.
It took off with over 100,000 students registered for Ng's popular CS229A course. Today, several million people have enrolled in Coursera courses, making the site one of the leading
MOOCs
A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, man ...
in the world.
Industry
From 2011 to 2012, he worked at
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
, where he founded and directed the
Google Brain
Google Brain is a deep learning artificial intelligence research team under the umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence. Formed in 2011, Google Brain combines open-ended machine learning research ...
Deep Learning Project with
Jeff Dean, Greg Corrado, and Rajat Monga.
In 2014, he joined
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the l ...
as chief scientist, and carried out research related to big data and AI. There he set up several research teams for things like
facial recognition and Melody, an AI
chatbot
A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would behav ...
for
healthcare.
In March 2017, he announced his resignation from Baidu.
He soon afterwards launched Deeplearning.ai, an online series of deep learning courses. Then Ng launched Landing AI, which provides AI-powered
SaaS products.
In January 2018, Ng unveiled the AI Fund, raising $175 million to invest in new
startups
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
. In November 2021, Landing AI secured a $57 million round of series A funding led by McRock Capital, to help manufacturers adopt computer vision.
Research
Ng researches primarily in
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
,
deep learning,
machine perception,
computer vision, and
natural language processing; and is one of the world's most famous and influential computer scientists. He's frequently won best paper awards at academic conferences and has had a huge impact on the field of AI, computer vision, and robotics.
During graduate school, together with
David M. Blei and
Michael I. Jordan, Ng coauthored the influential paper that introduced
latent Dirichlet allocation
In natural language processing, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is a generative statistical model that explains a set of observations through unobserved groups, and each group explains why some parts of the data are similar. The LDA is an ex ...
(LDA) for his thesis on reinforcement learning for drones.
His early work includes the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter project, which developed one of the most capable autonomous helicopters in the world. He was the leading scientist and principal investigator on the STAIR (STanford Artificial Intelligence Robot) project, which resulted in
ROS, a widely used
open-source robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrate ...
software platform. His vision to build an AI robot and put a robot in every home inspired Scott Hassan to back him and create
Willow Garage
Willow Garage was a robotics research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. The company was most likely best known for its open source software suite ROS (Robot ...
. He is also one of the founding team members for the Stanford WordNet project, which uses machine learning to expand the
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
WordNet
WordNet is a lexical database of semantic relations between words in more than 200 languages. WordNet links words into semantic relations including synonyms, hyponyms, and meronyms. The synonyms are grouped into '' synsets'' with short defin ...
database created by
Christiane Fellbaum.
In 2011, Ng founded the
Google Brain
Google Brain is a deep learning artificial intelligence research team under the umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence. Formed in 2011, Google Brain combines open-ended machine learning research ...
project at
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
, which developed large-scale artificial
neural networks using Google's distributed computer infrastructure. Among its notable results was a neural network trained using
deep learning algorithms on 16,000
CPU core
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...
s, which learned to recognize cats after watching only
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
videos, and without ever having been told what a "cat" is. The project's technology is also currently used in the
Android Operating System's speech recognition system.
Online education: MOOCs
In 2011, Stanford launched a total of three massive open online courses (MOOCs) on machine learning (CS229a),
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...
s, and AI, taught by Ng,
Peter Norvig
Peter Norvig (born December 14, 1956) is an American computer scientist and Distinguished Education Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. He previously served as a director of research and search quality at Google. Norvig is t ...
,
Sebastian Thrun, and
Jennifer Widom.
This has led to the modern MOOC movement. Ng taught machine learning and Widom taught databases. The course on AI taught by Thrun led to the genesis of
Udacity
Udacity, Inc. is an American for-profit educational organization founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky offering massive open online courses.
According to Thrun, the origin of the name Udacity comes from the company's des ...
.
Coursera
Coursera Inc. () is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses ...
was the 6th online education website that Ng built and arguably the most successful to date.
The seeds of massive open online courses (MOOCs) go back a few years before the founding of Coursera in 2012. Two themes emphasized in the founding of modern MOOCs were ''scale'' and ''availability''.
Founding of Coursera
Ng started the
Stanford Engineering Everywhere Stanford Engineering Everywhere, or SEE is an initiative started by Andrew Ng at Stanford University to offer a number of Stanford courses free online. SEE's initial set of courses was funded by Sequoia Capital, and offered instructional videos, r ...
(SEE) program, which in 2008 published a number of Stanford courses online for free. Ng taught one of these courses, "Machine Learning", which includes his video lectures, along with the student materials used in the Stanford CS229 class. It offered a similar experience to
MIT's Open Courseware except it aimed at providing a more "complete course" experience, equipped with lectures, course materials, problems and solutions, etc. The SEE videos were viewed by the millions and inspired Ng to develop and iterate new versions of online tech.
Within Stanford, they include
Daphne Koller with her "blended learning experiences" and co-designing a peer-grading system, John Mitchell (Courseware, a
Learning Management System
A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation, and delivery of educational courses, training programs, materials or learning and development programs. The lear ...
),
Dan Boneh
Dan Boneh (; he, דן בונה) is an Israeli-American professor in applied cryptography and computer security at Stanford University.
In 2016, Boneh was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the theory and ...
(using machine learning to sync videos, later teaching
cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...
on Coursera),
Bernd Girod (ClassX), and others. Outside Stanford both Ng and Thrun credit
Sal Khan
Salman Amin Khan (born October 11, 1976), commonly known as Sal Khan, is an American educator and the founder of Khan Academy, a free online non-profit educational platform and an organization with which he has produced over 6,500 vi ...
of
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also in ...
as a huge source of inspiration. Ng was also inspired by
lynda.com
LinkedIn Learning is an American online learning provider. It provides video courses taught by industry experts in software, creative, and business skills. It is a subsidiary of LinkedIn. All the courses on LinkedIn fall into four categories: Bus ...
and the design of the forums of
Stack Overflow
In software, a stack overflow occurs if the call stack pointer exceeds the stack bound. The call stack may consist of a limited amount of address space, often determined at the start of the program. The size of the call stack depends on many facto ...
.
Widom, Ng, and others were ardent advocates of Khan-styled tablet recordings, and between 2009 and 2011, several hundred hours of lecture videos recorded by Stanford instructors were recorded and uploaded. Ng tested some of the original designs with a local high school to figure the best practices for recording lessons.
In October 2011, the "applied" version of the Stanford class (CS229a) was hosted on ml-class.org and launched, with over 100,000 students registered for its first edition. The course featured quizzes and graded programming assignments and became one of the first and most successful massive open online courses (MOOCs) created by a Stanford professor.
Two other courses on databases (db-class.org) and AI (ai-class.org) were launched. The ml-class and db-class ran on a platform developed by students, including Frank Chen, Jiquan Ngiam, Chuan-Yu Foo, and Yifan Mai. Word spread through social media and popular press. The three courses were 10 weeks long, and over 40,000 "Statements of Accomplishment" were awarded.
Ng tells the following story on the early days of Coursera: His work subsequently led to his founding of Coursera with Koller in 2012. As of 2019, the two most popular courses on the platform were taught and designed by Ng: "Machine Learning" (#1) and "Neural Networks and Deep Learning" (#2).
Post-Coursera work
In 2019, Ng launched a new course "AI for Everyone". This is a non-technical course designed to help people understand AI's impact on society and its benefits and costs for companies, as well as how they can navigate through this
technological revolution.
Venture capital
Ng is the chair of the board for Woebot Labs, a psychological clinic that uses
data science to provide
cognitive behavioral therapy. It provides a therapy
chatbot
A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would behav ...
to help treat depression, among other things.
He is also a member of the board of directors for
drive.ai
Drive.ai, a subsidiary of Apple Inc., is an American technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California that uses artificial intelligence to make self-driving systems for cars. It has demonstrated a vehicle driving autonomously with a ...
, which uses AI for
self-driving car
A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...
s and was acquired by Apple in 2019.
Through Landing AI, he also focuses on democratizing AI technology and lowering the barrier for entrance to businesses and developers.
Publications and awards
Ng is also the author or co-author of over 300,
robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrate ...
, and related fields. His work in
computer vision and
deep learning has been frequently featured in press releases and reviews.
*1995. Bell Atlantic Network Services Scholarship
*1995, 1996. Microsoft Technical Scholarship Award
*1996. Andrew Carnegie Society Scholarship
*1998–2000: Berkeley Fellowship
*2001–2002: Microsoft Research Fellowship
*2007. Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship Sloan Foundation Faculty Fellowship
*2008.
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
''
Technology Review
''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...
''
TR35 (Technology Review, 35 innovators under 35)
*2009. IJCAI Computers and Thought Award (highest award in AI given to a researcher under 35)
*2009. Vance D. & Arlene C. Coffman Faculty Scholar Award
*2013.
''Time'' 100 Most Influential People
*2013. ''
Fortune'' 40 under 40
*2013.
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
10: Thinkers
*2014. ''
Fast Company
''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year.
History
''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...
'' Most Creative People in Business
*2015.
World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders
He has co-refereed hundreds of AI publications in journals like
NeurIPS. He has also been the editor for the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Associate Editor for the
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...
Robotics and Automation Society Conference Editorial Board (ICRA), and much more.
He has given invited talks at
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
,
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
,
Lockheed Martin, the
Max Planck Society,
Stanford,
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
,
UPenn,
Cornell,
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
,
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
, and dozens of other universities. Outside of the US, he has lectured in Spain, Germany, Israel, China, Korea, and Canada.
He has also written for ''
Harvard Business Review
''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. ''HBR'' is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, Ma ...
'', ''
HuffPost
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
'', ''
Slate'', ''
Apple News
Apple News is a news aggregator app developed by Apple Inc., for its iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and macOS operating systems. The iOS version was launched with the release of iOS 9. It is the successor to the Newsstand app included in previous v ...
'', and Quora Sessions' Twitter. He also writes a weekly digital newsletter called ''The Batch''.
Books
He also wrote a book ''Machine Learning Yearning'', a practical guide for those interested in machine learning, which he distributed for free. In December 2018, he wrote a sequel called ''AI Transformation Playbook''.
Ng contributed one chapter to ''Architects of Intelligence: The Truth About AI from the People Building it'' (2018) by the American futurist
Martin Ford.
Views on AI
Ng believes that AI technology will improve the lives of people, not that it is an anathema that will "enslave" the human race.
Ng believes the potential benefits of AI outweigh the threats, which he believes are exaggerated.
He has stated thatA real threat is regarding the future of work: "Rather than being distracted by evil killer robots, the challenge to labour caused by these machines is a conversation that academia and industry and government should have."
A particular goal of Ng's work is to "democratize" AI learning so that people can learn more about it and understand its benefits. Ng's stance on AI is shared by
Mark Zuckerberg, but opposed by
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...
.
In 2017, Ng said he supported
basic income
Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive an unconditional transfer payment, that is, without a means test or need to work. It would be received independently of a ...
to allow the unemployed to study AI so that they can re-enter the workforce. He has stated that he enjoyed
Erik Brynjolfsson
Erik Brynjolfsson (born 1962) is an American academic, author and inventor. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and a Senior Fellow at Stanford University where he directs thDigital Economy Labat the Stanford Institute for Human-Cen ...
and
Andrew McAfee's "
The Second Machine Age
''The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies'' is a 2014 book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee which is a continuation of their book ''Race Against the Machine''. They argue that the Second Ma ...
" which discusses issues such as AI displacement of jobs.
See also
*
Robot Operating System
Robot Operating System (ROS or ros) is an open-source robotics middleware suite. Although ROS is not an operating system (OS) but a set of software frameworks for robot software development, it provides services designed for a heterogeneous comp ...
*
Latent Dirichlet allocation
In natural language processing, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is a generative statistical model that explains a set of observations through unobserved groups, and each group explains why some parts of the data are similar. The LDA is an ex ...
*
Google Brain
Google Brain is a deep learning artificial intelligence research team under the umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence. Formed in 2011, Google Brain combines open-ended machine learning research ...
*
Coursera
Coursera Inc. () is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses ...
References
External links
HomepageNg's Quora profileNg's Medium blogAcademic Genealogy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ng, Andrew
1976 births
Living people
American computer businesspeople
American computer scientists
American education businesspeople
American people of Hong Kong descent
American roboticists
American people of Chinese descent
American technology chief executives
American technology company founders
American technology writers
American venture capitalists
Artificial intelligence researchers
British emigrants to the United States
British people of Hong Kong descent
Businesspeople from California
Businesspeople from London
Carnegie Mellon University alumni
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People from Los Altos, California
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