Andrew Yan-Tak Ng (; born April 18, 1976) is a British-American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and technology entrepreneur focusing on

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI). Ng was a cofounder and head of

Google Brain Google Brain was a deep learning artificial intelligence research team that served as the sole AI branch of Google before being incorporated under the newer umbrella of Google AI, a research division at Google dedicated to artificial intelligence ...

and was the former Chief Scientist at

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group into a team of several thousand people. Ng is an

adjunct professor An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, but the term is gen ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

(formerly

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...

and Director of its Stanford AI Lab or SAIL). Ng has also worked in the field of

online education Distance education, also known as distance learning, is the education of students who may not always be physically present at school, or where the learner and the teacher are separated in both time and distance; today, it usually involves online ...

, cofounding

Coursera Coursera Inc. () is an American global massive open online course provider. It was founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offe ...

and DeepLearning.AI. He has spearheaded many efforts to "democratize deep learning" teaching over 8 million students through his online courses. Ng is renowned globally in computer science, recognized in

Time magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps as ''TIME'') is an American news magazine based in New York City. It was published weekly for nearly a century. Starting in March 2020, it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York Cit ...

's 100 Most Influential People in 2012 and Fast Company's Most Creative People in 2014. His influence extends to being named in the Time100 AI Most Influential People in 2023. 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 Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...

products. On April 11, 2024,

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

announced the appointment of Ng to its board of directors.

Biography

Ng was born in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, in 1976 to Ronald Paul Ng, a hematologist and lecturer at UCL Medical School and Tisa Ho, an arts administrator working at the London Film Festival. His parents were both immigrants from

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

. He has at least one brother. Ng and his family moved back to Hong Kong and he spent his early years there. At the age of six he began learning the basics of programming through some books. In 1984 he and his family moved to

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

. Ng attended and 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 b ...

. During his high school years, he demonstrated exceptional mathematical ability, winning a Silver Medal at the

International Mathematical Olympiad The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. It is widely regarded as the most prestigious mathematical competition in the wor ...

. In 1997, he earned his undergraduate degree with a triple major in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

, and

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. Between 1996 and 1998 he also conducted research on

reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an interdisciplinary area of machine learning and optimal control concerned with how an intelligent agent should take actions in a dynamic environment in order to maximize a reward signal. Reinforcement learnin ...

model selection Model selection is the task of selecting a model from among various candidates on the basis of performance criterion to choose the best one. In the context of machine learning and more generally statistical analysis, this may be the selection of ...

, and

feature selection In machine learning, feature selection is the process of selecting a subset of relevant Feature (machine learning), features (variables, predictors) for use in model construction. Feature selection techniques are used for several reasons: * sim ...

at the AT&T

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

. In 1998, Ng earned his

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate 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 prac ...

in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT) in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

. At MIT, he built the first publicly available, automatically indexed web-search engine for research papers on the web. It was a precursor to

CiteSeerX 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 a ...

/ ResearchIndex, but specialized in machine learning. In 2002, he received his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

(Ph.D.) in Computer Science from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, under the supervision of Michael I. Jordan. His thesis is titled "Shaping and policy search in

" and is well-cited to this day. He started working as an assistant professor at

in 2002 and as an associate professor in 2009. He currently lives in Los Altos Hills,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. In 2014, he married Carol E. Reiley. 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. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

'' named Ng and Reiley an "AI power couple".

Career

Academia and teaching

Ng is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

at Stanford University departments of Computer Science and

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. He served as the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), where he taught students and undertook research related to

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

, and machine learning. His machine learning course CS229 at Stanford is the most popular course offered on campus with over 1,000 students enrolling some years. As of 2020, three of the 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 for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

in deep learning. The rationale was that an efficient computation infrastructure could speed up

statistical model A statistical model is a mathematical model that embodies a set of statistical assumptions concerning the generation of Sample (statistics), sample data (and similar data from a larger Statistical population, population). A statistical model repre ...

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) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

(HPC) for scaling up deep learning and accelerating progress in the field. In 2012, along with Stanford computer scientist Daphne Koller he cofounded and was CEO of

, 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

massive open online course A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the World Wide Web, Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and p ...

s (MOOCs) in the world.

Industry

From 2011 to 2012, he worked at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, where he founded and directed the

Deep Learning Project with Jeff Dean, Greg Corrado, and Rajat Monga. In 2014, he joined

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 (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...

for

healthcare Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...

. He also developed for the company the AI platform called DuerOS and other technologies that positioned Baidu ahead of Google in the discourse and development of AI. In March 2017, he announced his resignation from Baidu. He soon afterward launched DeepLearning.AI, an online series of deep learning courses (including the AI for Good Specialization). Then Ng launched Landing AI, which provides AI-powered

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 Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

. In November 2021, Landing AI secured a $57 million round of series A funding led by McRock Capital, to help manufacturers adopt computer vision. In October 2024, Ng's AI Fund made its first investment in India, backing AI healthcare startup Jivi, which uses AI for diagnoses, treatment recommendations, and administrative tasks. The investment highlights the growth of India's AI sector, expected to reach $22 billion by 2027.

Research

Ng researches primarily in

deep learning Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that focuses on utilizing multilayered neural networks to perform tasks such as classification, regression, and representation learning. The field takes inspiration from biological neuroscience a ...

, machine perception,

computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

, and

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

; 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 co-authored the influential paper that introduced

latent Dirichlet allocation In natural language processing, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is a Bayesian network (and, therefore, a generative statistical model) for modeling automatically extracted topics in textual corpora. The LDA is an example of a Bayesian topic ...

(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

Robot Operating System Robot Operating System (ROS or ros) is an Open-source software, open-source robotics middleware suite. Although ROS is not an operating system (OS) but a set of software frameworks for robot software software development, development, it provide ...

(ROS), a widely used

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

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 best known for its open source software suite Robot Operating Syste ...

. He is also one of the founding team members for the Stanford WordNet project, which uses machine learning to expand the Princeton

WordNet WordNet is a lexical database of semantic relations between words that links words into semantic relations including synonyms, hyponyms, and meronyms. The synonyms are grouped into ''synsets'' with short definitions and usage examples. It can thu ...

database created by

Christiane Fellbaum Christiane D. Fellbaum is an American linguist and computational linguistics researcher who is Lecturer with Rank of Professor in the Program in Linguistics and the Computer Science Department at Princeton University. The co-developer of the WordN ...

. In 2011, Ng founded the

project at

, which developed large-scale artificial

neural network A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a network can perfor ...

s using Google's distributed computing infrastructure. Among its notable results was a neural network trained using

algorithms on 16,000

CPU core A multi-core processor (MCP) is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit (IC) with two or more separate central processing units (CPUs), called ''cores'' to emphasize their multiplicity (for example, ''dual-core'' or ''quad-core''). Ea ...

s, which learned to recognize cats after watching only

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

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 Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

system.

Online education: massive open online course

In 2011, Stanford launched a total of three

(MOOCs) on machine learning (CS229a),

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

s, and AI, taught by Ng,

Peter Norvig Peter Norvig (born 14 December 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 th ...

Sebastian Thrun Sebastian Thrun (born May 14, 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and computer scientist. He is chief executive officer of Kitty Hawk Corporation, and chairman and co-founder of Udacity. Before that, he was a Google vice preside ...

, and

Jennifer Widom Jennifer Widom (born ) is an American computer scientist known for her work in database systems and data management. She is notable for foundational contributions to semi-structured data management and data stream management systems. Since 2017 ...

. 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 global for-profit massive open online course provider. It was founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky offering massive open online courses. According to Thrun, the origin of the name Udacity com ...

. 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''. By 2023, Ng has notably expanded access to AI education, with an estimated 8 million individuals worldwide taking his courses via platforms like DeepLearning.AI and Coursera.

Founding of Coursera

Ng started the Stanford Engineering Everywhere (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 OpenCourseWare MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to publish all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, freely and openly available to anyone, anywh ...

, 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 codesigning a peer-grading system, John Mitchell (Courseware, a Learning Management System), Dan Boneh (using machine learning to sync videos, later teaching

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logy, -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of Adversary (cryptography), ...

on Coursera), Bernd Girod (ClassX), and others. Outside Stanford, Ng and Thrun credit Sal Khan of

Khan Academy Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by Sal Khan. Its goal is to create a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short video lessons. Its website also includes suppl ...

as a huge source of inspiration. Ng was also inspired by lynda.com 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 fa ...

. 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. 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 Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, stru ...

to provide

cognitive behavioral therapy Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that aims to reduce symptoms of various mental health conditions, primarily depression, PTSD, and anxiety disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on challenging and chang ...

. It provides a therapy

to help treat depression, among other things. He is also a member of the board of directors for drive.ai, which uses AI for

self-driving car A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car (AC), driverless car, robotic car or robo-car, is a car that is capable of operating with reduced or no human input. They are sometimes called robotaxis, though this term refers specifica ...

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 publications in

, and related fields. His work in

and

has been featured often 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) ''

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

'', 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR35) *2009. IJCAI Computers and Thought Award (the 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 Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fate * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (19 ...

'' 40 under 40 *2013.

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

10: Thinkers *2014. ''

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webb ...

'' Most Creative People in Business *2015. World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders *2023. ''Time'' AI 100 Most Influential People *2024 Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Statistical Society. He has corefereed hundreds of AI publications in journals like NeurIPS. He has also been the editor of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR), Associate Editor for the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

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 federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...

, the

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

, Stanford, Princeton, UPenn, Cornell,

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

, 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 not-for-profit, independent corporation that is an affiliate of Harvard Business School. ''HBR'' is published six times a year ...

'', ''

HuffPost ''HuffPost'' (''The Huffington Post'' until 2017, itself often abbreviated as ''HPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and covers p ...

'', ''

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

'', ''

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 versi ...

'', 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 thinks that the real threat is contemplating the future of work: "Rather than being distracted by evil killer robots, the challenge to labor caused by these machines is a conversation that academia and industry and government should have." He has emphasized the importance of expanding access to AI education, stating that empowering people around the world to use AI tools is essential to building AI applications. In a December 2023 ''Financial Times'' interview, Ng highlighted concerns regarding the impact of potential regulations on open-source AI, emphasizing how reporting, licensing, and liability risks could unfairly burden smaller firms and stifle innovation. He argued that regulating basic technologies like open-source models could hinder progress without markedly enhancing safety. Ng advocated for carefully designed regulations to prevent obstacles to the development and distribution of beneficial AI technologies. In a June 2024 interview with the ''Financial Times'', Ng expressed concerns about proposed AI legislation in California that would have required developers to implement safety mechanisms such as a "kill switch" for advanced models. He described the bill as creating "massive liabilities for science-fiction risks" and said it "stokes fear in anyone daring to innovate." Other critics argued the bill would impose burdens on

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

developers and smaller AI companies. The bill was ultimately vetoed by Governor

Gavin Newsom Gavin Christopher Newsom ( ; born October 10, 1967) is an American politician and businessman serving since 2019 as the 40th governor of California. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served from 2011 to 201 ...

in September 2024.

References

External links

*
Ng's Quora profileNg's Medium blogAcademic GenealogyAndrew Ng's Publication List
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ng, Andrew 1976 births Living people American computer businesspeople 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 American artificial intelligence researchers Baidu people British artificial intelligence researchers British computer scientists British roboticists British technology chief executives British technology company founders British technology writers British venture capitalists British emigrants to the United States Businesspeople from California Businesspeople from London Carnegie Mellon University alumni Computer vision researchers English businesspeople English male writers English people of Chinese descent English people of Hong Kong descent Google employees Machine learning researchers Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Natural language processing researchers People from Los Altos, California Raffles Junior College alumni Scientists from California Scientists from London Stanford University Department of Computer Science faculty Stanford University School of Engineering faculty UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Writers from California Writers from London

Biography

Career

Academia and teaching

Industry

Research

Online education: massive open online course

Founding of Coursera

Post-Coursera work

Venture capital

Publications and awards

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Views on AI

See also

References

External links