
Artificial Intelligence Graduate Certificate - tma-1
http://scpd.stanford.edu/public/category/courseCategoryCertificateProfile.do?method=load&certificateId=1226717
======
ganeshkrishnan
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 and Stanford enough for this free course.

~~~
dswalter
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.

~~~
robotresearcher
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.

~~~
cr0sh
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.

~~~
XenophileJKO
Let's not do anything drastic. If you've finished those courses and have
decent experience a bachelor's degree will get you little to no practical
value. If there are holes in your knowledge, by all means fill them, but a
degree of little value is not a good investment in this line of work.

You are better off filling holes in your knowledge and build something
awesome. That's it. You want an interview & offer at Google, facebook,
Microsoft, it's pretty easy with a solid portfolio and a few months study or
refresh on algorithms.

------
jtagen
Why not take the Georgia Tech online MSCS instead? Only $7k, you get a
Master's degree instead of a 'Certificate', and you have the option of
covering a lot of the same material.

~~~
eranation
Yep. And Sebastian Thrun's course (the Stanford professor, google VP, Udacity
founder and google driverless car initiator) is part of that program. You can
take AI for robotics for credit there :)

~~~
XenophileJKO
They require a previous undergraduate degree, which is a no go for me. I'm
already a high level software engineer at a top tier company. I have no desire
to go back and take an undergraduate degree. But I do like collecting
certificates... Currently taking Udacity's self-driving nano-degree, pretty
fun for someone with no robotics background.

~~~
jedberg
How closely do they check the undergrad degree? Some second rate universities
will trade you a degree for experience plus cash. Most of them are non-
accredited though.

~~~
alnitak
Do you happen to know any accredited university or institution that would do
that? Maybe with some examinations?

~~~
dsacco
I don't think any actual accredited university would allow you to "test out"
of an entire four year degree, let alone simply buy it because you have
comparable experience.

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sharps_xp
Are ML/AI certificate holders competing for the same jobs as ML/AI PhD
graduates? I have a list of follow up questions to this but it seems like
there's a lot of hype for ML/AI/DeepLearning but no definitive way to track
this new job market. These online programs, although more accessible, are
doing the same thing as their physical campus counter part and not being
transparent about what to expect after finishing their programs.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
ML/AI is very new field. I heard someone say "AI is like teenage sex. Everyone
is talking about it but no one is sure how to do it"

So for jobs, ML/AI is pretty much an even field unless there are niche
research jobs which only requires Phd gradudates

~~~
richard___
According to another HN thread this is actually not true. Only having a
certificate, without CS/AI undergrad, makes it almost impossible to get a job.
You need Masters at least for most positions, some engineering positions you
can get in with Undergrad in CS and taking the right AI courses.

~~~
jayajay
Do people in the tech industry find any more value in physics/math undergrads
than CS? CS is not as rigorous. I always thought that physics/math undergrad +
ML certificate might be just as competitive as a masters in ML coming from a
non-relevant BS

~~~
aerioux
I'm going to have to disagree.

Physics/Math is useful but your particular field/speciality in CS is relevant
as well. I would bet a bit more money on a CS grad to understand convexity,
comp geometry and optimization than a physics grad, and math majors don't
always have the code skills to develop things for production.

Point of argument here being frequently neither do CS Phds and at tech
companies you pair Math/CS Phds with 'production _' engineers.

Also certificates aren't really rigorous necessarily and also are quite easy
to one-off versus relevant programs/theses/research experience.

_ production is an overloaded term depending where you go

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Animats
$20K for a few online courses? Genesereth teaching logic and automated
reasoning? (I took a class from him once. Exam question: "Does a rock have
intentions?")

~~~
m-photonic
So, does it?

~~~
trendia
You have to take the class to find out!

~~~
Bombthecat
You won't believe what happens next!

Find out for just 20k!

~~~
CervezaPorFavor
In the end, the answer is "it depends."

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theCricketer
This costs about $15k - $19k. With all the great lecture and homework content
out on the Internet about AI, ML, deep learning, vision and natural language,
I wonder if one can put together a more comprehensive and customized version
of this that one can learn for free.

~~~
jbarciauskas
EdX is strongly committed to learning being free. You can audit any of the
courses in the AI MicroMasters for free.

[https://www.edx.org/micromasters/columbiax-artificial-
intell...](https://www.edx.org/micromasters/columbiax-artificial-intelligence)

(EdX employee)

------
deepGem
The toughest curriculum in any AI related MOOC I've seen so far. Just CS228 -
Probabilistic Graphical Models is enough to bleed someone's brain. Wish Daphne
Koller still taught that course.

~~~
XenophileJKO
You are in luck. They have just re-released it on Coursera.
[https://www.coursera.org/specializations/probabilistic-
graph...](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/probabilistic-graphical-
models)

~~~
deepGem
That's awesome! Thanks for the link

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bitL
Oh well, as someone who is currently enrolled into Udacity's Self-driving car
and AI nanodegrees, watching ongoing MIT's self-driving course, considering
taking GATech's online M.S. degree for ML, I should probably start planning
budget for this Stanford offering...

~~~
ConAntonakos
Awesome! I'm also currently taking Udacity's self-driving car nanodegree, but
I think I only intend on doing the first of three semesters because I want to
concentrate on the fundamentals, and not necessarily self-driving cars. Do you
recommend enrolling or checking out the AI nanodegree? Have you looked at the
ML one?

~~~
bitL
It's too early to evaluate AI nanodegree as it has just started and so far we
did Sudoku solver ;-) As for ML, I have it on my mind after SDC & AI, though
already took Ng's first run of ML one so I am not sure it would be that
beneficial.

So far SDC is the best fun I had in a while, getting a car drive all by itself
on a circuit feels absolutely cool! ;-) Have fun as well, I hope they have
more cool stuff prepared for us!

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kriro
20k or 10k per required course (there's electives but let's assume the bare
minimum) seems steep for an online certificate which seems fairly worthless
from a signaling POV.

I'm not sure their brand name justifies that price (not sure about the
content). The competition is probably the AI nanodegree from Udacity which
costs 800$/term with the chance to earn some of that back. If the employer I
want the certificate for knows what online certificates are, chances are they
are familiar with Udacity (possibly more so than with Stanford in that
market).

------
Xcelerate
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?

~~~
ChuckMcM
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.

~~~
poikniok
This has to be sarcasm right?

~~~
kahnjw
Clearly

------
WhitneyLand
Stanford is just trying to cash in on people by having their cake and eating
it too.

They want to charge 20k, but not let anyone have a chance of further advancing
to complete a real degree, no matter how excellent their performance in this
program.

The reason they do this is solely to protect their brand and exclusivity. They
already offer online degrees but the acceptance rate is just as limited as the
on campus program.

Yes the learning is important, but so is the credential and a certificate
doesn't even come close to a degree in the job market.

Stanford should pick one:

1) Charge Stanford prices, scale up online, and let any student who can do the
work pay tuition and earn a degree.

2) Charge lower prices for certificates and continue to artificially ration
real degrees.

~~~
enknamel
I did this program. I can say it was literally a waste of money. I planned on
joining a member company (so I could complete the degree remotely) at some
point but meh none were interesting enough to join. You can get all the value
in this program for free by reading a couple textbooks.

~~~
bitL
Can you please be more specific? I am considering taking this program and any
details why was this inadequate would be very helpful! Thank you!

~~~
enknamel
You get to take the actual classes but you don't get real credit for them.
Recruiters, hiring managers don't care because it's not a real degree and they
have no knowledge of the program. If you just want the knowledge you can
basically get it for free from youtube or buy the textbooks. The ML/AI
lectures there were often better than the ones from Stanford. You also don't
have real student privileges. Some of the professors request that you do not
attempt to show up for lecture or office hours because you aren't a real
student. They just want you to watch the videos online.

And so on. It was overall a pretty negative experience for me. I can't
recommend it.

------
sp332
Darn, I thought they were preparing to give degrees to AIs.

------
betadreamer
Can you get similar knowledge through books? In general what book do you
recommend? I'm specifically interested in deep learning.

~~~
kriro
I think "Artificial Intelligence a Modern Approach" is still the best
foundation book. However it certainly is not focused on deep learning. There's
chapters on pretty much everything (one on reinforcement learning) but it is
build around the idea of intelligent agents first and foremost. Best written
CS book I own.

~~~
sqldba
I'd love to read a book like that but I don't have any maths, and I presume
those things are full of maths.

~~~
kriro
I think this book is actually very approachable without much of a mathematics
background. It's structured so that you can usually skip the mathy parts (and
there aren't many really). Time and space complexity might be a bit tough but
it's not that hard to work through. I think the Bayes related math was
explained well and should be approachable with next to no math knowledge.

The math is mostly applied and not proofs. There's a fair amount of pseudocode
and algorithms but they are explained well and I think it's not hard to follow
(our students of different backgrounds usually didn't have problems). I did
get a bit tired of the running example of the map of Romania (essentially used
for all the search related things). The diagrams for algorithms are very
helpful.

------
b1gtuna
Would anyone recommend this over doing a masters degree in the similar area of
study but at a local university (ie. not Standford)?

~~~
cr0sh
Disclaimer: I do not hold any kind of real degree (just an Associates from a
defunct tech school - worth little to nothing now) - so take the following for
what it is...

Based on my experience, which I won't re-iterate here - the various MOOCs I've
taken (and currently the Udacity Nanodegree) would not be anywhere close to a
masters in the subject (unless I am severely overestimating a masters - but I
don't think so).

TBH - they would probably equate closer to an Associates, at best.

This offering from Stanford? Not sure - but I still don't think it would be
the equivalent. I'm not saying it wouldn't be worthwhile, but I think if your
goal is a deep level of knowledge and understanding of the subject, then a
quality masters program for CompSci or similar would be the better path.

~~~
amatsukawa
Rigor is there.

I'm now working in the ML/AI research division of big-4, all I needed (and all
hiring teams needed to see on my resume) were a couple of these classes (with
good internal performance ratings).

Having said that, my employer paid for these classes. No way I would pay this
price out of pocket. There are probably much cheaper ways to get the same
knowledge.

------
amelius
> Software engineers interested in acquiring a solid foundation in artificial
> intelligence.

Does a "solid foundation in AI" actually exist?

I'm asking because it seems that nobody really knows why many algorithms
actually work, or even how they should be adjusted to cover new applications.
To me it sounds more like "educated guessing".

~~~
grayshirts
If you are talking about ML then: Bayesian stuff, Variational and MCMC,
Graphical models, Deep Learning, Linear Algebra, Probability theory,
Statistics, Multivariate Calculus, Optimizations - as a baseline. I think the
"average" person on HN would not be interested in ML if they had to learn it
rigorously. It's much easier to blackbox the entire thing and label yourself
as a "ML Engineer" then learn the fundamentals listed above. Having a
Stats/Applied Math background would be very helpful.

------
oculusthrift
This only makes sense for people whose work will pay for them to take it.

------
ClearAsMud
Anyone have suggestions on alternative programs that are less expensive,
online, and self-paced? 40+ IT guy trying to stay relevant.

~~~
maerF0x0
My advice, start with the free stuff. If you complete it then consider a paid
thing. The completion rates of online courses is super low. I take this to
mean people don't really want to do it.

~~~
unprepare
I think its just difficult for people to hold themselves accountable. in
standard colleges, you have other students, teachers, grades, etc which
creates a social pressure for you to continue your progress.

with a MOOC, there doesnt really exist the same social pressure to continue or
excel.

Its been interesting to watch how various MOOCs have tried to recreate these
pressures (due dates, courses separated into weeks, peer review assignments,
teacher 'office hours' etc.) and while i think they've gotten a lot better
than at the beginning, im not sure they will be able to fully replicate the
pressures of having real people in the classroom with you, who will notice if
you are gone for a week

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zxcvvcxz
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?

~~~
torinmr
The courses are identical to the courses one would take if they were getting
their Master's at Stanford - the only difference is that only four classes are
required, while a Master's requires about 15.

I'm enrolled in Stanford's CS Master's program right now through the Honors
Cooperative Program (which lets you get a Master's online while working in
industry), and I'm currently planning on doing a dual specialization in
Systems and AI. For the AI specialization I've already taken CS 221 and 229,
and I'll have to take three more AI classes drawn from a list pretty similar
to the Elective Courses list in the OP.

~~~
davidwihl
Did you take the courses online or on campus? Did you feel like a "regular
student" or "divided but equal"? Did you look at alternatives like Harvard
Extension ALM in Software Engineering?

