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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.'"
"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.
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.
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.