Andrew Yan-Tak Ng (Chinese: 吴恩达; born April 18, 1976) is a British-American computer scientist and technology entrepreneur who focuses on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). He was a cofounder and head of Google Brain and served as the former Chief Scientist at Baidu.
Ng is an adjunct professor at Stanford University, where he previously worked as an associate professor and director of its Stanford AI Lab (SAIL). He has also worked in online education, cofounding Coursera and DeepLearning.AI. He has led efforts to "democratize deep learning," teaching over 8 million students through his online courses. Ng is well-known in computer science and has been recognized by Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2012 and Fast Company’s Most Creative People in 2014. He was also named in Time100 AI’s Most Influential People in 2023.
In 2018, Ng launched and currently leads the AI Fund, an investment fund initially worth $175 million that supports artificial intelligence startups. He has also founded Landing AI, a company that creates AI-powered SaaS products. On April 11, 2024, Amazon announced that Ng would join its board of directors.
Early life and education
Andrew Yan-Tak Ng was born in London in 1976. His parents were Ronald Paul Ng, a blood doctor and teacher at UCL Medical School, and Tisa Ho, a worker who helped organize the London Film Festival. Both of his parents moved to London from Hong Kong. In 1984, Ng and his family moved to Singapore.
Ng studied and graduated from Raffles Institution.
In 1997, he completed his undergraduate degree with three areas of study: computer science, statistics, and economics, from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Between 1996 and 1998, he worked on research projects about how machines learn from rewards and mistakes, choosing the best models, and selecting important features at AT&T Bell Labs.
In 1998, Ng earned his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At MIT, he created the first publicly available, automatically indexed web-search engine for research papers on the internet. This tool was an earlier version of CiteSeerX/ResearchIndex but focused on machine learning.
In 2002, he received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, under the guidance of Michael I. Jordan. His thesis, titled "Shaping and policy search in reinforcement learning," is still widely referenced today.
Career
Ng began his career as an assistant professor at Stanford University in 2002 and was promoted to associate professor in 2009. He is a professor in the departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford. From 2008 to 2012, he directed the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), where he taught students and conducted research on topics like data mining, big data, and machine learning. His course, CS229, is one of the most popular classes at Stanford, with over 1,000 students enrolled in some years. As of 2020, three of the most popular courses on Coursera were taught by Ng: Machine Learning (#1), AI for Everyone (#5), and Neural Networks and Deep Learning (#6).
In 2008, Ng’s team at Stanford was among the first in the United States to promote the use of GPUs in deep learning. They believed that using efficient computing systems could greatly speed up training for statistical models, helping to solve challenges related to big data. At the time, this decision was seen as risky, but it later became a standard practice in the field. Since 2017, Ng has supported the use of high-performance computing (HPC) to improve deep learning and advance the field.
In 2012, Ng co-founded Coursera with Stanford computer scientist Daphne Koller and served as its CEO. Coursera offers free online courses to people worldwide. Ng’s course, CS229A, attracted over 100,000 students when it launched. Today, millions of people have enrolled in Coursera courses, making it one of the largest online learning platforms in the world.
From 2011 to 2012, Ng worked at Google, where he led the Google Brain Deep Learning Project with colleagues Jeff Dean, Greg Corrado, and Rajat Monga. In 2014, he joined Baidu as chief scientist and focused on research in big data and AI. At Baidu, he created research teams for projects like facial recognition and an AI chatbot named Melody, which supports healthcare. He also developed DuerOS, an AI platform that helped Baidu become a leader in AI development. Ng left Baidu in March 2017.
After leaving Baidu, Ng launched DeepLearning.AI, an online platform offering deep learning courses, including the AI for Good Specialization. He later started LandingAI, which provides AI-powered software tools for businesses. In January 2018, Ng created the AI Fund, which raised $175 million to support new AI startups. In November 2021, LandingAI received $57 million in funding to help companies use AI technology.
In October 2024, the AI Fund invested in Jivi, an Indian startup that uses AI for healthcare tasks like diagnosing illnesses and recommending treatments. This investment shows the growing importance of AI in India, which is expected to spend $22 billion on AI by 2027.
Ng’s research focuses on machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. He is widely recognized as one of the most influential computer scientists in the world. He has won many awards for his academic work and has made significant contributions to AI, computer vision, and robotics.
During graduate school, Ng co-authored a key paper on latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) with David M. Blei and Michael I. Jordan. This work was part of his research on reinforcement learning for drones. His early projects include the Stanford Autonomous Helicopter, which created one of the most advanced autonomous helicopters in the world. He also led the STAIR (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot) project, which led to the development of Robot Operating System (ROS), a widely used open-source robotics platform. His vision for home robots inspired the creation of Willow Garage by Scott Hassan. Ng was also involved in the Stanford WordNet project, which expanded the Princeton WordNet database using machine learning.
At Google in 2011, Ng founded the Google Brain project, which used Google’s computing systems to train large-scale neural networks. One notable achievement was a neural network that learned to recognize cats from YouTube videos without being told what a cat was. The technology from this project is now used in the Android operating system’s speech recognition system.
Ng believes that the main challenge is preparing for how AI will affect jobs. He has emphasized the need to expand access to AI education so people worldwide can use AI tools effectively. In a December 2023 interview with the Financial Times, Ng warned that regulations on open-source AI could harm smaller companies and slow innovation. He argued that overly strict rules on basic technologies might not improve safety but could hinder progress.
In a June 2024 interview, Ng criticized a proposed AI law in California that would require safety measures like a "kill switch" for advanced AI models. He called the bill unrealistic and said it would discourage innovation. The bill was later rejected by California Governor Gavin Newsom in September 2024.
Online education: massive open online course
In 2011, Stanford University offered three online courses called massive open online courses (MOOCs). These courses were about machine learning (CS229a), databases, and artificial intelligence (AI). They were taught by Andrew Ng, Peter Norvig, Sebastian Thrun, and Jennifer Widom. These courses helped start the modern MOOC movement. Andrew Ng taught the machine learning course, and Jennifer Widom taught the databases course. The AI course, taught by Sebastian Thrun, led to the creation of Udacity.
The idea of MOOCs began several years before Coursera was founded in 2012. Two main goals of early MOOCs were to reach many people and make courses widely available.
By 2023, Andrew Ng had helped millions of people learn about artificial intelligence. About 8 million people worldwide had taken his courses through platforms like DeepLearning.AI and Coursera.
Andrew Ng started the Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) program in 2008. This program made free online versions of Stanford courses available. Ng taught one of these courses, "Machine Learning," which included his video lectures and materials used in the Stanford CS229 class. The SEE program provided a complete course experience, with lectures, materials, and problem solutions. Millions of people watched the SEE videos, which inspired Ng to improve online learning tools.
At Stanford, other people worked on online education. Daphne Koller created blended learning experiences and helped design a peer-grading system. John Mitchell developed a Learning Management System called Courseware. Dan Boneh used machine learning to sync videos and later taught cryptography on Coursera. Bernd Girod worked on ClassX. Outside Stanford, Andrew Ng and Sebastian Thrun were inspired by Sal Khan of Khan Academy. Ng also drew ideas from lynda.com and the forums on Stack Overflow.
Andrew Ng and others supported using tablet recordings similar to Khan Academy’s style. Between 2009 and 2011, hundreds of hours of lecture videos were recorded and shared online by Stanford instructors. Ng tested some of these recordings with a local high school to find the best ways to teach online.
In October 2011, the "applied" version of the Stanford course (CS229a) was hosted on ml-class.org. Over 100,000 students signed up for the first edition. The course included quizzes and programming assignments and became one of the first successful MOOCs created by a Stanford professor.
Two other courses were launched: one about databases (db-class.org) and one about AI (ai-class.org). The ml-class and db-class courses used a platform created by Stanford students, including Frank Chen, Jiquan Ngiam, Chuan-Yu Foo, and Yifan Mai. News about the courses spread through social media and the press. Each course lasted 10 weeks, and more than 40,000 certificates were given to students who completed them.
Andrew Ng’s work later helped him start Coursera with Daphne Koller in 2012. By 2019, the two most popular courses on Coursera were "Machine Learning" and "Neural Networks and Deep Learning," both taught by Ng.
In 2019, Ng launched a new course called "AI for Everyone." This course is not technical and helps people understand how AI affects society, businesses, and how people can adapt to changes caused by AI.
Venture capital
Ng is the chairperson of the board for Woebot Labs, a mental health clinic that uses data science to offer cognitive behavioral therapy. It provides a therapy chatbot to help treat depression and other conditions.
He is also on the board of directors for drive.ai, a company that uses artificial intelligence for self-driving cars. drive.ai was bought by Apple in 2019.
Through LandingAI, he works to make AI technology more accessible and easier for businesses and developers to use.
Publications and awards
Ng has written or co-written more than 300 articles about robotics and related areas. His research in computer vision and deep learning has been often mentioned in news articles and reviews.
- 1995: Bell Atlantic Network Services Scholarship
- 1995, 1996: Microsoft Technical Scholarship Award
- 1996: Andrew Carnegie Society Scholarship
- 1998–2000: Berkeley Fellowship
- 2001–2002: Microsoft Research Fellowship
- 2007: Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (Sloan Foundation Faculty Fellowship)
- 2008: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review, 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR35)
- 2009: IJCAI Computers and Thought Award (the highest AI award for researchers under 35)
- 2009: Vance D. & Arlene C. Coffman Faculty Scholar Award
- 2013: Time 100 Most Influential People
- 2013: Fortune’s 40 under 40
- 2013: CNN 10: Thinkers
- 2014: Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business
- 2015: World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders
- 2023: Time AI 100 Most Influential People
- 2024: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Statistical Society
He has reviewed hundreds of AI articles for journals like NeurIPS. He has also served as an editor for the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) and as an associate editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Conference Editorial Board (ICRA).
He has given invited talks at NASA, Google, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, the Max Planck Society, Stanford, Princeton, UPenn, Cornell, MIT, UC Berkeley, and many other universities. He has also lectured in Spain, Germany, Israel, China, Korea, and Canada.
He has written for publications such as Harvard Business Review, HuffPost, Slate, Apple News, and Quora Sessions’ Twitter. He also writes a weekly digital newsletter called The Batch.
Personal life
Ng lives now in Los Altos Hills, California. In 2014, he got married to Carol E. Reiley. They have two children: a daughter who was born in 2019 and a son who was born in 2021. The MIT Technology Review called Ng and Reiley an "AI power couple." As of 2024, his wife asked for a divorce.