The Teacher Who Taught AI to Millions — Andrew Ng

Andrew Ng (Wikimedia Commons, credit needed)

In 2011, a Stanford professor put his machine learning class online for free.

More than 100,000 people signed up.

That professor was Andrew Ng. He went on to co-found Coursera, lead AI at Google and Baidu, and teach AI to millions of people around the world.

London, Hong Kong, Singapore

Raffles Institution in Singapore, where Andrew went to school (Wikimedia Commons, credit needed)

Andrew Ng was born on April 18, 1976, in London. He grew up in Hong Kong, and in 1984 his family moved to Singapore, where he attended Raffles Institution.

His father, a doctor, was interested in using computers to help medicine. Andrew started coding young.

Three universities

Andrew studied at Carnegie Mellon University, then earned a master's degree at MIT and a PhD at UC Berkeley.

In 2002, he became a professor at Stanford University, where he worked on robots and machine learning.

Google Brain

In 2011, Andrew started a deep learning project at Google, later called Google Brain. The team trained a huge computer network on YouTube videos. Without being told what a cat was, it learned to recognise cats on its own.

It sounded funny. It was a big moment for AI.

Coursera

In 2012, Andrew and fellow Stanford professor Daphne Koller founded Coursera, which offers online courses from top universities. His machine learning course became one of the most taken online classes ever.

Coursera went public in 2021.

Baidu and beyond

From 2014 to 2017, Andrew was chief scientist at Baidu, leading its AI research.

Then he started building his own AI companies: DeepLearning.AI for AI education, Landing AI to help factories use computer vision, and AI Fund, which helps create new AI startups. In 2024, he joined the board of Amazon.

Where he is now

Today, Andrew Ng leads AI Fund, DeepLearning.AI and Landing AI, and is an adjunct professor at Stanford. He is famous for saying AI is the new electricity: a technology that will change every industry.

Why the story matters

Andrew Ng's story shows the power of sharing knowledge. He could have kept his lessons inside Stanford. Instead, he opened them to the whole world.

For young builders, the lesson is simple. Teaching others multiplies your impact.

He did not just build AI. He built AI builders.

The Record

Born: April 18, 1976

From: London; raised in Hong Kong and Singapore

Studied: Carnegie Mellon (B.S.), MIT (M.S.), UC Berkeley (PhD)

Built: Google Brain project, Coursera, DeepLearning.AI, Landing AI, AI Fund

Timeline

1976 Born in London.

2002 Joins Stanford as a professor.

2011 Starts the Google Brain project.

2012 Co-founds Coursera.

2014 Becomes Baidu's chief scientist.

2017 Launches DeepLearning.AI and Landing AI.

2018 Launches AI Fund.

2024 Joins Amazon's board.