Andrew Ng has led teams at Google[1] and Baidu [2]that have gone on to create self-learning computer programs used by hundreds of millions of people, including email spam filters and touch-screen keyboards that make typing easier by predicting what you might want to say next.
As a way to get machines to learn without supervision, he has trained them to recognise cats in YouTube [3]videos without being told what cats were. And he revolutionised this field, known as artificial intelligence, by adopting graphics chips meant for video games.
Baidu's Chief Scientist, Who Led Firm's AI Push, to Resign[4]
To push the boundaries of artificial intelligence[5] further, one of the world's most renowned researchers in the field says many more humans need to get involved. So his focus now is on teaching the next generation of AI specialists to teach the machines.
Nearly 2 million people around the globe have taken Ng's online course on machine learning. In his videos, the lanky, 6-foot-1 Briton of Hong Kong and Singaporean upbringing speaks with a difficult-to-place accent . He often tries to get students comfortable with mind-boggling concepts by acknowledging up front, in essence, that "hey, this stuff is tough."
Ng sees AI as a way to "free humanity from repetitive mental drudgery." He has said he sees AI changing virtually every industry, and any task that takes less than a second of thought will eventually be done by machines. He once said famously that the only job that might not be changed is his hairdresser's - to which a friend of his responded that in fact, she could get a robot to do his hair.
At the end of a 90-minute...