Executive Manual For AI

Fresh from Baidu, Andrew Ng offers clues on how to manage the rise of artificial intelligence.

- Peter High

Andrew Ng is one of the foremost thinkers on artificial intelligence. He founded and led the Google Brain project that developed massive-scale deep learning algorithms. In 2011, he spearheaded Stanford University’s main massive open online course (MOOC) platform. His course on machine learning would eventually reach an “enrollment” of more than 100,000 students. That experience led Ng to cofound Coursera, a MOOC that partners with some of the top universities in the world to offer high-quality online courses. Today Coursera is the largest MOOC platform in the world.

Most recently, Ng led Baidu’s artificial intelligence group. Under his watch, Baidu became one of the few companies with top-notch expertise in every major AI category: speech, natural language processing, computer vision, machine learning and knowledge graph, and his team introduced two new business units to the company: autonomous driving and the DuerOS Conversational Computing platform.

In late March, Ng announced that he would step away from Baidu but “continue working toward the AI transformation of our society and the use of AI to make life better for everyone.” A couple months later, I caught up with him at his office at the Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford.

High: AI is a broad topic. What are some of the areas that are most exciting to you and represent the biggest areas of opportunity in the near term?

Ng: People often ask me, “Andrew, what industries do you think AI will transform?” I usually answer that it might be easier to think about what industries AI will not transform. To be honest, I struggle to think of one. For example, I was speaking at a conference and