Tag Archives: Sebastian Thrun

Study AI at Stanford online and for free

I exaggerated a little with the headline. In fact, you’ll be studying the same materials, getting the same lectures, answering the same quizzes, and doing the same assignments as first year students in the introductory course to artificial intelligence taught by Stanford professors, Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig but you won’t be attending officially as a Stanford student.

I first came across this item at the Robot Shop blog. From there I went to AI class website to find more information. From the AI class home page,

The class runs from October 10 through December 16, 2011. While this class is being offered online, it is also taught at Stanford University, where it continues to be a popular intro-level class on AI. For the online version, the instructors aim to offer identical materials, assignments, and exams, and to use the same grading criteria. Both instructors will be available for online discussions.

A high speed internet connection is recommended as most of the course content will be video based. Access to a copy of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach is also suggested. Peter Norvig is co-author of this text and is donating all royalties to charity.

Here’s a little more about the two instructors,

Sebastian Thrun is a Research Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, a Google Fellow, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the German Academy of Sciences. Thrun is best known for his research in robotics and machine learning.

Fast Company Magazine selected him as the fifth most creative person in business, the UK Telegraph included him in their list of 100 living geniuses, and Popular Science included him in their list of Brilliant Ten. His self-driving car was named one of the 50 best inventions of 2010 by Time Magazine, and Scientific American named Thrun one of the 50 business and technology leaders. …

Peter Norvig is Director of Research at Google Inc. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Norvig co-authored Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, which is the world’s most popular text book on Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach is used in over 1,200 universities in over 100 countries, and it has been translated into 12 languages. Prior to joining Google, Norvig
was the head of the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center, making him NASA’s senior computer scientist. …

Here’s a video about the course,

ETA Aug. 17, 2011: According to an Aug. 17, 2011 news item on physorg.com, the course has attracted 58,000 registrants so far,

Demand has been enormous. Already more than 58,000 people have expressed interest in the artificial intelligence course taught by Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford research professor of computer science and a Google Fellow, and Google Director of Research Peter Norvig.

In fact, there are two other free online courses also being offered Machine Learning and Introduction to Databases.

Sept. 19, 2012 Note: I have removed what appeared to be some sort of excerpt which had been left blank.