
Andrew Ng is raising a $150M AI Fund - Tenoke
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/15/andrew-ng-is-raising-a-150m-ai-fund/
======
cr0sh
I look at announcements like this, and past ones about Ng, and I always marvel
at how things have gone since I took and completed his 2011 ML Class...

That was one helluva course, challenging and interesting, and fun all at the
same time (and so much "concretely" \- lol).

From what I understand, that course is still available thru Coursera (which Ng
booted up after the ML Class experiment; Udacity was Thrun's contribution
after his and Norvig's AI Class, which ran at the same time in 2011).

~~~
narvind
Nice.

I wrote down my thoughts after taking his new DL course. Hope it helps you all
:) [https://medium.com/towards-data-science/thoughts-after-
takin...](https://medium.com/towards-data-science/thoughts-after-taking-the-
deeplearning-ai-courses-8568f132153)

~~~
fizwhiz
Excellent review! I haven't taken Ng's original ML course and noticed that you
mentioned it would be a pre-requisite to taking any DL course (whether fast.ai
or Ng's DL course). Care to elaborate why?

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KasianFranks
"Many of these funds are putting time and resources into securing data sets"
\- this is key.

~~~
elmar
Looks like Data sets are going to be the moat of AI companies.

~~~
danohu
open/free data sources are likely to become very important. AI hasn't yet been
super-important in the open data world, but I'd expect it to gain a lot of
prominence as time goes by.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
Starting a data set company would probably be a good idea. Necessarily has
some humans labeling them, but you could probably build a lot of tools around
it to make it as smooth as possible. Also, task rabbit and Amazon turk workers
could be used.

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beambot
Makes sense. As one of the most public personas in AI, he probably gets
pitched _frequently_ by AI startups. Might as well let someone else bankroll
his dealflow while collecting 2% annual management fees and participate in the
upside via carry a decade later.

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tabeth
I'm curious to the opinions of people here on companies collecting data to
build data sets vs. privacy.

~~~
Eridrus
Privacy activists have long ignored any benefits of data collection and as we
continue to extract more and more value from data this should become more
evident and we will be forced to start discussing concrete harms rather than
people's general discomfort.

~~~
canoebuilder
Aside from running large scale analyses over large health data sets, what are
some examples where the value derived from large aggregations of personal data
is dispersed widely through a society rather than being captured mostly by a
single corporation or organization?

~~~
stevenhuang
Building large data sets doesn't necessarily mean from personal data. Look at
open-data initiatives such as [http://open.canada.ca/en/open-
data](http://open.canada.ca/en/open-data) . Lots of potential for useful tools
to be created if the data is there, which won't happen if even benign data
like that are kept under wraps/not collected.

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valgor
>Ng told me that his personal goal is to help bring about an AI-powered
society.

Anyone have links to interviews or information on Ng's vision? I'd love to
hear the details.

~~~
Barrin92
not sure if there's a transcript anywhere but he gave a lecture on his broad
views in a Stanford lecture

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21EiKfQYZXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21EiKfQYZXc)

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fiatjaf
If he had called it AICOIN he could have raised much more.

~~~
thinbeige
My thought before opening this thread.

I thought the AI hype is over again but apparantly not.

~~~
ThomPete
Andrew NG believes that AI is just as important as electricity. I tend to
agree.

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wyldfire
Aside: how do you pronounce his surname?

~~~
sh33mp
He spent a couple of years in Singapore, so I'm going by the pronunciation
there. (May be different in different regions, and I'm not sure about his
preferred pronunciation now). It would do something like this:

Start with the word "urn". Now don't drag it out, make it short. Make the "n"
and "ng" sound at the end (urng). Now take out the "r" sound (uhng).

It seems like Americans do tend to pronounce it "ehng" instead.

~~~
Danihan
In the video it sounds like "ooge". Similar to "rouge" or "stooge" but cropped
short.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUO3Pk0nOCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUO3Pk0nOCM)

~~~
white-flame
Sounds like "ng" to me. In english, we can say "mmm" or "nnnn" as drawn-out
sounds on their own, just do the same with "ng".

------
ryanSrich
Slight side topic: Has anyone gone through the new deeplearning.ai track on
Coursera yet? Wondering how difficult it is for someone that can write code,
but never had any formal academic training in CS.

~~~
kovek
Hey Ryan,

I see this question asked very often in the last year or two. I am not an
expert on deep learning, nor have I taken the deeplearning.ai track, but am
currently learning about the topic.

Some of the resources out there have nice primers. I think you need to be
somewhat comfortable with understanding the usual log/exp functions for the
very base, understand calculus, with partial derivatives, and be used to
linear algebra and matrix operations. Some good understanding of statistics
could be useful as well when learning about ML. I don't think that a good
background in CS is necessary for this stuff. This has not much to do with
programming languages, operating systems, Turing completeness. Maybe having a
good base in algorithms could be useful for _implementing_ the libraries to
make sure they are optimal.

I was wondering why do people ask this question (or ask about resources on
learning about this topic in general), when answers on this are so easily
findable online.

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sandGorgon
> _Many of these funds are putting time and resources into securing data sets,
> technical mentors and advanced simulation tools to support the unique needs
> of AI startups_

What are "advanced simulation tools" ? something like
[https://github.com/marcotcr/lime](https://github.com/marcotcr/lime) ?

~~~
tachyonbeam
Simulated worlds / games like the OpenAI gym and DeepMind lab come to mind:

[https://gym.openai.com/](https://gym.openai.com/)

[https://github.com/deepmind/lab](https://github.com/deepmind/lab)

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Quintus_
Is it likely that I (and other Andrew Ng 'fans') will be able to buy stock in
his company?

~~~
forgotmysn
there is usually a minimum investment amount. for a fund of this size, im
guessing it would be around $5m

~~~
tachyonbeam
I find this really frustrating about tech investing. Much of the early
investment opportunities are only available to the richest. It's an insider's
game.

~~~
likelynew
I don't think it is not unique to tech investing, but it is true for all small
companies.

~~~
padobson
Or big companies. If you wanted a chance to profit from Snap, Square, Twitter
or (coming soon) Pinterest, you had to be a high level investor.

I believe most regulations that block this kind of investment are done in the
name of protecting the little guy.

~~~
goobynight
They are done in order to protect the little guy, due to the high risk
associated with the high reward.

Otherwise, you will get people that have negative net worth, maybe $20k in
credit card debt + student loans that they pay minimums on, and a few kids
dumping a year of savings into Snapchat and losing it all.

While it sucks for small players that are ok with high risk investing (and
would be ok losing it), there just isn't a way to stop the flood of stupid
that would come with it.

Probably the closest thing I've seen to being able to invest in something like
this is cryptocurrecy,

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PopsiclePete
"During an earlier conversation, Ng told me that his personal goal is to help
bring about an AI-powered society."

So is this Elon Musk's arch-nemesis?

~~~
Tenoke
Andrew NG is mostly talking about society powered by current techniques, which
Musk also likes. Musk's worry is over the potential once/if we've advanced the
technology enough (which given current progress and open avenues for research
isn't too far-fetched of an expectation).

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justboxing
Is AI the new Social?

~~~
jraines
SoMoLo --> AIVRCoin

doesn't quite jump off the powerpoint slide as well though

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panabee
one of the best ways to monetize education is with student investments instead
of student payments. YC is doing this with startup education.

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Jdam
Lol, even Filecoin outraised that Fund

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ktta
Offtopic, but this amp page is the cleanest page I've ever seen.

I would love to just use the amp version for all TechCrunch pages. Anyone in
the mood to make a chrome extension? (I'm on desktop, and the results are
still clean without adblocker)

~~~
taytus
Plug: We are on it :) [https://roboamp.com](https://roboamp.com)

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SoMisanthrope
Go, Andrew, go!!!

