Stanford Artificial Intelligence course draws avalanche of sign-ups

A whopping 58,000, [the number keeps climbing; this is a conservative total] people have signed up for a single free online course at Stanford. People from around the world—of high school age, adults, and elderly—want to do this one course. The freebie is on Artificial Intelligence. The two professors teaching the course have exceptional calling cards as AI experts. They are Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun.

Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford, helped develop the so then-publicized Google self-driving car, a cloud computing vehicle that runs on sensors, cameras, artificial intelligence, and GPS.

Unlike Phase One of Internet online course efforts, which were flat video lectures, the Stanford scientists will use streaming Internet video and interactive features for quizzes. Google Moderator software will allow the two teachers to make sure they are answering the most pressing questions.

Their inspiration has been Salman Khan, the ex-hedge fund manager who quit his day job to sit in a closet in his home making videotapes of math and science lessons with the aid of a computer screen, tablet and pen. He used his own savings; at the time movers and shakers took notice. Educators praise Khan for being on to something important: research as a medium for effective, engaging learning.

Khan’s dream has been to “flip the script” on the education system. In his perfect world, science and math concepts and procedures are taught via innovation, not via a desperate teacher shouting about polynomials, to 30 students, many of whom are not keeping up. The Khan computer screen shows moving lines of an equation doing the real work of instruction. Classroom time is used for teacher student collaboration and review.

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