2014
Dario Amodei says he joined the AI field in late 2014, working at Baidu with Andrew Ng on speech recognition.
“I first joined the AI world when I was, uh, working at Baidu with Andrew Ng in late 2014, which is almost exactly ten years ago now.”
Topic
Andrew Ng
20 facts from 3 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2025
Andrew Ng said advice earlier in the year that people should not learn to code because AI will automate it will be seen as some of the worst career advice ever given.
“I think we look back on that as some of the worst career advice ever given.”
Undated
DJ Patil said Andrew Ng's early online machine learning course led to Coursera and that it has helped over 10 million students.
“you wrote the uh the first major online course on machine learning and AI, which led then to Coursera. At the time, it was radical thinking to actually teach an online course, and it's helped over 10 million students.”
Undated
DJ Patil said Andrew Ng started the Google Brain project along with Jeff Dean, Greg Corrado and Rajat Monga.
“Along with Jeff Dean, Greg, uh, Corrado, and uh, Rajat Monga, you started uh the Google uh DeepMind, uh, not the deep”
Undated
DJ Patil said Andrew Ng was one of the first people to advocate using GPUs for deep learning.
“he was one of the first people to advocate and using GPUs for deep learning.”
Undated
Andrew Ng said that almost two years before the talk he saw a debate over whether software counted as an agent.
“almost two years ago, I saw this rising trend in AI that a lot of people are excited about. But within the tech community, there's all this debate where some people write software and says an agent, others say, no, that's not an agent”
Undated
Andrew Ng said he ran an unpublicized campaign to get people to adopt the word 'agentic'.
“I actually kind of ran a campaign that I didn't publicize, but I did it anyway to try to get more people to just adopt the word agentic.”
Undated
Andrew Ng said marketers later applied the word 'agentic' to everything, which helped the movement take off.
“a few months later, a bunch of marketers would get a hold of this word and slap it as a sticker on everything in sight, and that helped the movement take off.”
Undated
Andrew Ng described agentic workflows as having an AI iterate through outlining, researching, drafting and critiquing.
“With agentic workflow, the idea is we can ask the AI to take a more iterative approach and say, first write an outline, then do some research and write the first draft, then critique it.”
Undated
Andrew Ng said agentic workflows work much better for tasks such as medical advice, legal advice, tariff compliance and writing code.
“from medical advice, legal advice, tariff compliance, writing code for a lot of different things, these agentic workflows work much better.”
Undated
Andrew Ng said a task that can be written as a standard operating procedure may be a good candidate for a multi-step agentic workflow.
“if you can write a standard operating procedure, like an SOP, that also may be a sign is we're seeing if you can codify the SOP in a multi-step agentic workflow.”
Undated
Andrew Ng said non-engineers in Silicon Valley teams who know how to code are starting to outperform those who do not.
“the marketers, HR professionals, the analysts, the finance professionals, the ones that know how to code, they're starting to run circles around the ones that don't.”
Undated
Andrew Ng said his children, aged four and six, occasionally use tablets with him present.
“my kids four and six, um, they do use uh uh tablets occasionally, but I'm there with them, right?”
Undated
Andrew Ng characterized the previous US administration's AI safety thinking as safety theater driven by lobbyists seeking regulatory capture.
“There was really safety theater driven by lobbyists, um, fear-mongering to try to create regulatory capture, anti-open source types of regulations, right?”
Undated
Andrew Ng said he worries American competitiveness will suffer if high-skill immigration is made harder.
“I really worry about American competitiveness if we make it harder for high skill immigration.”
Undated
Andrew Ng said he came to the United States as an undergraduate student at about seventeen years old.
“When I came to the United States as an undergrad student, I think I was like seventeen years old.”
Undated
Andrew Ng described a data center as a machine that turns electricity into intelligence, or tokens, and said energy is a bottleneck.
“when you build a data center, that's a machine to turn electricity into intelligence, or turn electricity into, um, tokens.”
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Andrew Ng said European regulators told him they wanted to lead in regulating AI, which he does not think creates competitive advantage.
“for a while, over the last few years, visiting some European regulators, I heard things like, we want to be leaders in regulating AI.”
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Andrew Ng said people in Silicon Valley may underestimate how much distrust of AI exists across the United States.
“I think many of us may underestimate the distrust that a lot of people across the nation have for AI.”
Undated
Ramin Mohammadi paraphrases a recent post by Andrew Ng arguing education must shift toward practical skills, saying knowledge is great but skills are greater.
“there was this new post, uh, by Andrew Ng recently that he argued, Um, this urgent shift in the education, and I'm going to paraphrasing what he said. He said, knowledge is great, but skills are greater.”
Episodes