Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Education Project 162
mikejuk writes "Professor Sebastian Thrun has given up his Stanford position to start Udacity — an online educational venture. Udacity's first two free courses are Building a Search Engine and Programming a Robotic Car. In a moving speech at the Digital Life Design conference, he explained that after presenting the online AI course to thousands of students he could no longer teach at Stanford: 'Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting.' Let's hope Udacity works out; Stanford is a tough act to follow."
Gack! (Score:2, Interesting)
Hope it turns out better than his class did. The other classes were far better managed than the AI course.
That was unexpected (Score:5, Interesting)
That was unexpected. But then, his automatic driving work had already moved to Google.
He turned around the Stanford CS department, which was embarrassingly bad for years. (I have a degree from there; I know.) It was being run by the mathematical logic people, who were trying to make AI work through predicate calculus and expert systems. That turned out to be a dead end, but the existing faculty didn't want to admit it. Thrun reoriented the department towards statistical methods for AI, and things got moving again.
This is the future. (Score:4, Interesting)
When books can be copied for free, why pay 200$ for a physical version of the book?
I think the only thing we'll have in terms of live people will be live tutors you can ask questions via advanced IM
The cool thing about this is that it is the opposite of the "No child gets ahead act", if a kid is motivated, they can watch hundreds of supplemental optional videos related to their course. Or with proper understanding of the subject at hand, they can move ahead to the new videos. Also this is all available for free or nearly free, so the cost of an education is simply 100$ or less for a laptop. This means people across the world who couldn't have access to quality education will. If you're in a 3rd world country with nothing to do all day, maybe you'll devote your life to getting a grand education. We might find new Einsteins popping up and at younger and younger ages.
Going back to the original universities. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the first universities anyone could stop in and listen to a lecturer for free. If they were interested in perusing individual education they would work out a fee between the professor and the student. There wasn't any strict curriculum or degrees. The professors paid the university a cut similar to the way a barber shop works today.
The business model should be the same. Free to watch the lectures and pay for individual attention.
This is a big deal (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been a lot of criticism of the AI course - most of it by people who didn't attend beyond the first couple of weeks. I finished the course and had a good time doing it. It wasn't without flaws, but I have no doubt that with the necessary financial backing, they can make the necessary improvements and push on to create some remarkable content.
If they can solve the question of certification, they, and those who will inevitably follow, might just revolutionise the educational landscape.
And if it all goes wrong, Google wont kick him out of bed.
Re:I'm curious, (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That was unexpected (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I got a MS from Stanford. The problem was the expert system guys, Feigenbaum and company. They were claiming that expert systems would yield strong AI Real Soon Now. Feigenbaum's 1983 book "The Fifth Generation" shows that optimism at its height. It did not end well. The next decade is referred to as the "AI Winter". [amazon.com]