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Stanford AI Class 'Beta' For Commercial Launch?
First time accepted submitter Lyrdor writes "The Terms of Service for the Stanford Artificial Intelligence class points to how the free class this fall will be used for 'developing and evaluating the Online Course prior any commercial release of the Course' by a startup called KnowLabs. Although all of the press accounts so far have pointed to how the course would be a new example of Open Educational Resources from Stanford, the terms of service point to something else going on. On the LinkedIn page of David Stavens, Co-Founder and CEO at Know Labs, the startup is described on his profile as an 'angel funded startup to re-envision and revolutionize education using the social web and mobile apps. We launched www.ai-class.com and attracted over 130,000 students in 190+ countries.'"
I don't want to be the grader that receives 130,000 lab assignments.
We're seeing education become like television, advertising-funded.
While this is sort of crass, it might mean lower student loans.
I don't think it's just a cynical stealth-focus group; I think they actually intend to lower to barriers and cost of education in the long run.
Then again, what with schools like Stanford raising money ten times faster than even the best public schools and supporting less than half as many students on that cushion of raw cash I like to imagine that they're somehow more philanthropic. To keep me from sending letter bombs.
Peter Norvig? That's enough of a reason to join the course.
Though I am not sure how involved he will be in a student when there are 100,000 enrolled in one class.
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
Can someone please translate what they intend to do into English?
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
"Good," I say. Bringing education online will reduce the costs and increase the availability. Of course there will still be costs associated, Stanford shouldn't expect to offer these for free, but the current rate of cost increase is unsustainable. So, perhaps this will align interests better.
I realize that chart compares the rise to CPI-U, which is rigged for political convenience, but even still the cost rises are too much to continue unabated for decades to come. There will be downstream consequences for the economy to having millions of college graduates starting life under a heavy debt burden. When the 18-35 year old demographic no longer has much disposable income, many changes will have to occur. Instead of buying new washers and dryers for that new house, they'll be paying interest to bankers. Some people don't even know that the student load industry was recently nationalized to hasten this transition.
My daughter has 10 more years until College and I really doubt a traditional live-away 4-year program will be the prevailing model by then. People tell me that's too soon until I point out that we just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first web browser. 10 years ago, lots of people thought AOL on dialup was pretty neat, then we throw in Moore's Law for the next ten years, along with those slopes, and I think it's more likely we'll see online education with live-away intervals for labs and such.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I completed my enrollment the other day and am extremely psyched to have the opportunity to participate. Opted for the 'Basic' track as I don't have the time/energy for the whole enchilada. If they want to use my feedback to help develop a monetized version, that's fine with me; I get to learn cool stuff from smart people, and the provider of the service gets to improve their product.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Adding this number of students would have been impossible without Slashdot.
All government research grant recipients need to do a course material for online courses in their own area. Government will always have up-to-date course ware for the public who are willing to spend time to learn.
According to Google, there doesn't seem to be an Albert Class at Stanford.
1. Interesting that /. is making such a big deal of recognizing 1st time contributors. It's an "interesting" editorial policy.
2. I, too, wondered whether or not to complete the enrollment process. We never: /my/ question will be answered? Apparently about 1 in 100K;
o had a realistic opportunity to interact with the instructor(s). I know that a certain set of questions will be answered, but what are the odds
o never had an opportunity to get feedback to quizzes/exams;
o Maybe I missed it, in the initial furor, but the lectures will now be delivered 2 wks, after the live class.
The "bloom is off the rose", but it will provide a interesting excuse for ignoring my other tasks in the next few months.
Does anyone here doubt Acacia is assessing its patient portfolio in light of this now becoming a startup?
Check out the company's site, they provide the software for actually doing the class. If Stanford repeats this next year, you may need to pay for a license to the software, but this says nothing more about the actual class's openness than using MyCourses does.
also, sensationalism much?
phht... might as well get a degree in Latin, least its fucking useful
to be effecient in the class or is the book only required for the course there at Stanford. For just a cert i dont see many people signing up to buy a $100 book that they will only use a few pages of and possibly never use ever again.
I'm participating in the full course online, and am excited to do so. A large part of my motivation is for learning about the challenges that the instructors face, and their design solutions to meet their goals. I emailed Dr. Thrun asking if I could ask some questions, or if there were plans to present their experiences at the end. The response, as I expected for a very, very busy professor, was that they will probably report our generally at the end. Which I'm totally cool with. However, this seems like maybe more information is going to Know Labs to create a product, rather than to the world to create better distance education opportunities (which, I would argue, is more valuable than teaching the world about AI). Still not the worst thing in the world, and I'm not complaining about getting the chance to learn what I can, but private money in education rarely turns out for the better.
Based on what I can tell, KnowLabs is very much played-down on the ai-class.com website and Stanford's role is played up. It looks like the start-up is looking to act as a contractor to Universities to help them setup, run, and possibly maintain better, more useable, more scalable online education services. Keep in mind that the free AI Class gives you no real credit, it's just there if you're interested in the subject and want to learn a bit more before taking the plunge (back) into academia.
Personally, I applaud what they're doing. Maybe they can help unseat Blackboard and other god-awful "Online Education Tools".
To nay-sayers who think this kind free offering dilutes the "value" of their education when they pay for an equivalent class... You get degree and/or continuing education credits, the people taking a free class like this one do not. They get nothing but some extra knowledge. For someone like me, who is considering a Masters in CS, these classes are a great way to get my feet wet and figure out what I want to focus on.
It's listed as a free course, yes?
The startup is listed as "angel-funded", yes? That implies the online version of the course will also be free. (And doesn't fit the description of "commercial" in my book.)
Other than the misleading title, I don't see any issue here.
Back in 1991, Stanford University spun off the management of their endowment into the Stanford Management Company. At first they were into classic passive investments, like most university endowments. But they've gone beyond that. They invest in venture capital companies. They're located out on Sand Hill Road, where all the Silicon Valley venture capitalists have offices. Executives have moved between the Stanford Management Company and venture capital firms for years. The ties to that community are very close.
This has worked out very well. Stanford tends to take an equity stake in companies spun out of Stanford. Stanford owns part of Cisco, part of Yahoo, and part of Google. It's getting to the point that Stanford University is becoming a VC firm that runs an educational operation on the side as a tax break.
So a deal to run educational operations through a VC firm is perfectly normal for Stanford.
According to the FAQ, you don't need to buy the book, the course is self-contained. If you want to read the book it's on avax.
If you do a little googling you'll find that the book is not mandatory.
Like 90% percent of college courses?
Even if it weren't optional, a single $100 book is tame compared to most courses I've taken.