I’ve always wanted to make a robot smart. I thought it would be super cool to build an artificial human...It is fascinating to study intelligence from a constructive perspective when you build something. [5:53]
Computers are so insanely dumb that you have to give them rule for every contingency. Very unlike the way people learn [from data and experiences]. Computers are being instructed, and because it is so hard to get the instruction set right we pay software engineers $200,000 a year. [6:55]
The most recent innovation—which has been in the making for 30 or 40 years—is the idea that computers can find their own rules. They can learn from falling down and getting up like children can. That revolution has led to a capability that is completely unmatched. [7:12]
How do you choose what problems to try and solve? I have two desires in life. [1] To make the lives of others better. [2] And I want to learn. I don’t want to be in a job I am good at because if I am in a job I am good at the chance for me to learn something interesting is minimized. So I want to be in a job I am bad at. [9:44]
I have been focused on what is the maximum impact on society. Transportation is something that has transformed the 20th century more than any other invention. Yet we still have a sub-optimal transportation solution where we kill 1.2 million people every year in cars. We are extremely inefficient resource-wise. Just go to any city and look at the number of parked cars. We spend endless hours in traffic jams. A self-driving car or a flying car could completely change this. [10:34]
Maintain a continuous focus on improving the weakest part of the system. As long as you focus on improving the weakest part of the system you eventually build a really great system. [17:11]
As a professor, you empower other people. Your job is to make your students look great. That is all you do. [19:07]
The biggest skill I think that people should acquire is to put themselves into the position of the other person. To listen to what the other person has to say. They’d be shocked how similar the other person is to themselves. They would be shocked by how their owns actions don’t reflect their intentions. [21:08]
Read How to Win Friends & Influence People and apply it every day. [22:10]
What DARPA did was genius. They made a completely new funding model. They said let’s not fund effort [reserch papers] let’s fund outcomes. [24:58]
This new funding model drew in new people. These people are mostly crazy people. They had a car and a computer and wanted to make a million bucks [the prize money]. It was so awesome. [25:35]
On the Udacity self-driving car course: We should give everyone the skill to build a self-driving car. If we do this we would have 1,000 self-driving car startups. If 10% succeed that would mean there would be more self-driving cars and everyone would be safer. [43:36]
If you added up all the engineers that were acquihired in the self-driving space and do the math —as a lower bound I’d estimate that the value of each engineer was $10 million. Think about this. You get yourself a skill, you team up and build a company and your worth is now $10 million. That is cool. What other thing could you do in life to be worth $10 million within a year? [44:45]
Education should be a basic human right. It can not be locked up behind ivy tower walls. It can’t be only for rich people. It has to be opened up to everybody. [56:50]
Learn from founders who came before you. Every week I read a biography of a founder and tell you what I learned on Founders podcast.
