Baidu's AI Chief, Andrew Ng, Resigns; He's Coy About What's Next

Andrew Ng, one of the world's leading artificial intelligence researchers, said in a Medium post that he is resigning as the head of AI initiatives at Baidu Corp., one of China's largest Internet companies. Ng said he said he will "continue to shepherd" the growth of AI in society, but provided few clues about what might come next. He portrayed his departure from Baidu as amicable, saying: "the team is stacked up and down with talent; I am confident AI at Baidu will continue to flourish." Ng has held a multitude of high-profile positions in Silicon Valley in the past decade, serving as a computer science professor at Stanford University, as head of the Google Brain project, and as chairman of Coursera, an online-education company that he co-founded with Stanford faculty colleague Daphne Koller. I've completed a new book called "You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a Useless Liberal Arts Education."