Photograph of light at the end of a tunnel
Letters

What to Do in a Tough Economy: How to Survive and Thrive Amid Economic Uncertainty

The economic downturn of the past six months has hit many individuals and companies hard, and I’ve written about the impact of rising interest rates on AI. The effects of high inflation, the Russian war in Ukraine, and an economic slowdown in China are rippling across the globe...
How AI Can Help Counteract Climate Change: It's Time to Consider Cooling the Earth By Atmospheric Aerosol Injection
Letters

How AI Can Help Counteract Climate Change: It's Time to Consider Cooling the Earth By Atmospheric Aerosol Injection

A new report from UN Climate Change says that the world might be on track for 2.5 °C of warming by the end of the century, a potentially catastrophic level of warming that’s far above the 1.5 °C target of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Illustration of Andrew Ng, a scary monster coming out of a computer monitor
Letters

Multi-Headed Attention and Other Halloween Horrors

Each year, AI brings wondrous advances. But, as Halloween approaches and the veil lifts between the material and ghostly realms, we see that spirits take advantage of these developments at least as much as humans do.
Illustration of Andrew Ng on a computer searching for "Panda bear" and getting a Paddington instead
Letters

Prompt Engineering: Future of AI or Hack?

Is prompt engineering — the art of writing text prompts to get an AI system to generate the output you want — going to be a dominant user interface for AI? With the rise of text generators such as GPT-3 and Jurassic and image generators such as DALL·E...
Scanner over a collage of images
Letters

The Fate of GPU Prices and What It Means for AI

The rise of AI over the last decade has been powered by the increasing speed and decreasing cost of GPUs and other accelerator chips. How long will this continue? The past month saw several events that might affect how GPU prices evolve.
Iteration process chart
Letters

How to Reduce Risk and Uncertainty in AI Projects

When I wrote recently about how to build a career in AI, several readers wrote to ask specifically about AI product management: the art and science of designing compelling AI products. I’ll share lessons I’ve learned about this here and in future letters.
Andrew Ng with a welcome message displayed on a laptop
Letters

Imposter Syndrome: Don't Let It Hold You Back

In this letter, I’d like to address the serious matter of newcomers to AI sometimes experiencing imposter syndrome, where someone — regardless of their success in the field — wonders if they’re a fraud and really belong in the AI community.
Illustration of a brain over a muscular arm
Letters

How to Develop Muscle Memory for Your Mind

Activities such as writing code and solving math problems are often perceived as purely intellectual pursuits. But this ignores the fact that they involve the mental equivalent of muscle memory.
Left: Panda drawn by Andrew Ng in 10 minutes | Right: Panda generated by Stable Diffusion in seconds
Letters

Text-to-Image Generation and the Path to Truly Open AI

Stable Diffusion, an image generation model that takes a text prompt and produces an image, was released a few weeks ago in a landmark event for AI. While similar programs can be used via API calls or a web user interface, Stable Diffusion can be freely downloaded and run on the user’s hardware.
A stack of academic research papers are locked up with chains
Letters

Scientific Research Wants to be Free: US Officials Block Paywalls on Gov-Funded Studies

I’m thrilled! Paywalled journals that block free access to scientific research are the bane of the academic community.
Illustration shows an AI job searcher heading into the workforce.
Letters

How to Build a Career in AI, Part 7: Optimizing Your Job Search

Every job search is different. Here are some tips from Andrew Ng to increase the odds you’ll find the right position.
Job search pillar and two guys talking and drinking coffee
Letters

How to Build a Career in AI, Part 6: Job Search Fundamentals

Last week, I wrote about switching roles, industries, or both as a framework for considering a job search. If you’re preparing to switch roles or industries, there’s a lot about your target job that you probably don’t know.
An illustration shows how career changes can be a role switch, an industry switch, or both.
Letters

How to Build a Career in AI, Part 5: Finding Your First AI Job

Andrew Ng presents a framework for job seekers in AI, especially those entering from a different field.
A statue of Lady Justice holds a set of scales in each hand, signifying inconsistent decision making.
Letters

Toward More Consistent Decision-Making

Andrew Ng considers how inconsistent human decisions are, and how AI can reduce that inconsistency.
Vehicle avoiding traffic cones
Letters

The Trouble With Reinforcement Learning

While working on Course 3 of the Machine Learning Specialization, which covers reinforcement learning, I was reflecting on how reinforcement learning algorithms are still quite finicky.

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