Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World

by Cade Metz

They also hired additional researchers from Stanford and Toronto as the project graduated from Google X to a dedicated AI lab, Google Brain. The rest of the industry, and even parts of Google Brain, didn’t quite realize what was about to happen. Just as the lab reached this key moment, Andrew Ng decided to leave. He had another project in the works, and it needed his attention. He was building a start-up, Coursera, that specialized in MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, a way of delivering a university education over the Internet. In 2012, it was one of those Silicon Valley ideas that entrepreneurs, investors, and journalists were convinced would completely change the world. At the same moment, Sebastian Thrun was creating a similar start-up called Udacity. Neither project, though, could begin to compete with what was about to unfold inside Google Brain.