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Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

scpd.stanford.edu

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Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#11

Post by realitygrill »

dswalter wrote: post #8
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #2

Not sure if people remember but Stanford in collaboration with Sebastian Thrun offered one of the first online educational course in Machine Learning. This piqued my interest in ML and I enrolled & completed the course from one of the most rural parts of India (I had to create an extension antenna for my 3g phone to get better reception). Udacity was born due to the popularity of this course. Can't thank Sebastian an…

That's a [edit:perfectly fine] example to choose for a Stanford MOOC, since Coursera was started based on the success of Andrew Ng's machine learning course. edit: People below (and above) are more knowledgeable than I am.

Actually, Thrun's AI course, Ng's ML course, and Widom's Databases course were announced and ran pretty much simultaneously. They were all successful, but only Thrun decided to split off because of it.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#12

Post by bitL »

robotresearcher wrote: post #9
dswalter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a [edit:perfectly fine] example to choose for a Stanford MOOC, since Coursera was started based on the success of Andrew Ng's machine learning course. edit: People below (and above) are more knowledgeable than I am.

Thrun's course was offered earlier* and Udacity launched earlier. What's funny? * edit: I just learned the courses were simultaneous. Udacity launched June 2011, Coursera April 2012, according to Wikipedia.

Thrun & Norvig did Intro to AI, Ng did Machine Learning, Koller did PGM (another course related to AI/ML) and Widom did DB/SQL, which is how it all started. Thrun then started Udacity, Ng & Koller started Coursera.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#13

Post by bitL »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #5

How do people in industry generally view these types of certificate programs? Is it markedly "worse" than doing e.g. a Master's on campus? Also - is this closer to a Master's level program or part of an undergraduate curriculum?

If you look at pricing, it's below their Master level so I guess is more undergrad-style.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#14

Post by Kephael »

Xcelerate wrote: post #3

If one's goal is to work at OpenAI, FAIR, or DeepMind, which would be a better use of time — obtaining this certificate or getting quality papers into NIPS / ICML?

Certainly the latter, getting published in top journals or conferences is several orders of magnitude more difficult.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#15

Post by nkozyra »

b1gtuna wrote: post #4

Would anyone recommend this over doing a masters degree in the similar area of study but at a local university (ie. not Standford)?

Hard to say without having taken these classes. GT isn't Stanford but a top 10 MSCS that offers an ML specialization for ~$8k-$10k.

Whether that provides more value or employment opportunity I cannot say, but it is encouraging to see more to universities offering an alternative to traditional degree programs.

I think there's a path for non-MS, non-PhD backgrounds, but probably not now. Outside of the big companies, ML/AI is often a solution without a problem. So until they learn practical application I think supply will outnumber demand and most of the jobs will go to PhD AI/statistics backgrounds.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#16

Post by ChuckMcM »

Xcelerate wrote: post #3

If one's goal is to work at OpenAI, FAIR, or DeepMind, which would be a better use of time — obtaining this certificate or getting quality papers into NIPS / ICML?

Wow tough call. The certificate would represent a baseline of understanding which can be then further trained, a good publication history in NIPS/ICML Etc. would represent a solid contribution to the field. I would not be surprised if those were, to a first approximation, equivalent.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#17

Post by [deleted] »

bitL wrote: post #12
robotresearcher wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thrun's course was offered earlier* and Udacity launched earlier. What's funny? * edit: I just learned the courses were simultaneous. Udacity launched June 2011, Coursera April 2012, according to Wikipedia.

Thrun & Norvig did Intro to AI, Ng did Machine Learning, Koller did PGM (another course related to AI/ML) and Widom did DB/SQL, which is how it all started. Thrun then started Udacity, Ng & Koller started Coursera.

[deleted]

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#18

Post by nkozyra »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #5

How do people in industry generally view these types of certificate programs? Is it markedly "worse" than doing e.g. a Master's on campus? Also - is this closer to a Master's level program or part of an undergraduate curriculum?

The available classes align with graduate level one's for their MSCS.

If nothing else it's markedly worse because it's 1/3 the classes :). Beyond that I'd expect rigor ... it's Stanford after all.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#19

Post by cr0sh »

robotresearcher wrote: post #9
dswalter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a [edit:perfectly fine] example to choose for a Stanford MOOC, since Coursera was started based on the success of Andrew Ng's machine learning course. edit: People below (and above) are more knowledgeable than I am.

Thrun's course was offered earlier* and Udacity launched earlier. What's funny? * edit: I just learned the courses were simultaneous. Udacity launched June 2011, Coursera April 2012, according to Wikipedia.

No - AI Class (Norvig/Thrun) and ML Class (Ng) both ran at the same time, in the Fall of 2011. I took both courses, but only completed the ML Class (I had to drop the AI Class due to personal issues at the time).

I'm not sure which MOOC company started first (in 2012), though - I do think it may have been Udacity. I know that when it did start, it wasn't able to offer the AI Class because of {reasons} (I think maybe licensing of course content or something) - and so instead it offered the CS373 course (at the time titled "How to Build Your Own Self Driving Vehicle" or something like that). By that time (Spring 2012), I had moved on past my earlier problems, and jumped at that course - I took it and completed it as well.

Coursera, meanwhile, was able to offer the original ML Class as a premier course (maybe Ng had different rights to the content, or maybe there was issues on the AI Class that had to do with the dual instructor partnership of the class - I'm not sure what really happened there).

After about a year (IIRC?), Udacity was able to finally offer the original AI Class as part of their courses (I think now renamed "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence").

Today, I'm taking the Udacity Nanodegree course, as I've noted before here.

I think this offering from Stanford is interesting, but it doesn't seem like it is currently "available" to enroll, because the two required courses seem closed or something? Maybe they're taking enrollment for a future starting date. That said, while the tuition isn't outside of something I could do, I currently think the best use of my money and time - after I complete the Udacity thing - would be to pursue getting a BA on CompSci or something of that nature, then pursuing other paths.

Should've done it a long time ago when I was younger - but I was dumb.

Re: Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate

#20

Post by mindcrime »

nkozyra wrote: post #15
b1gtuna wrote: post #4

Would anyone recommend this over doing a masters degree in the similar area of study but at a local university (ie. not Standford)?

Hard to say without having taken these classes. GT isn't Stanford but a top 10 MSCS that offers an ML specialization for ~$8k-$10k. Whether that provides more value or employment opportunity I cannot say, but it is encouraging to see more to universities offering an alternative to traditional degree programs. I think there's a path for non-MS, non-PhD backgrounds, but probably not now. Outside of the big companies, M…

Outside of the big companies, ML/AI is often a solution without a problem.

I would say just the opposite. There isn't a business too small to benefit from ML/AI. That is, assuming you acknowledge that there's more to ML/AI than "deep learning". Not everybody needs a deep neural network. Sometimes you just need linear regression or a random forest.

If you come at it from that point of view, the knowledge you gain from taking Andrew Ng's machine learning course is enough to create value for companies / organizations.

A lot of the discussions on this topic here on HN seem to be based on an assumption that you have to be doing cutting edge original research to be useful. I think that's very far from the case.

Now the problem is, does the mom and pop bakery on the corner know that they could benefit from ML? And perhaps the more salient question is "are they looking for somebody to do ML for them"? The answer is probably "no" in both cases, so you might have to do some work to sell to that market. But the value you can create is real. Help them optimize production so they throw away less bread on slow days, etc. and you're talking direct business impact.

I suspect that there will be, for a long time, a wide continuum in terms of how ML/AI skills can help create value. Which means there will be a lot of ways to leverage this field from a career standpoint.

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