Making Friends with Machine Learning was an internal-only Google course specially created to inspire beginners and amuse experts.* It is one of Google's best-loved educational offerings of all time. Curious to know what's in there? The course is designed to give everyone -- no matter your role -- the tools you need for effective participation in machine learning for solving business problems and for being a good citizen in an increasingly AI-fueled world. MFML is perfect for humans of all stripes; it focuses on conceptual understanding (rather than the mathematical and programming details) and guides you through the ideas that form the basis of successful approaches to machine learning. It has something for everyone!

In 1997, Hiroaki Kitano, a research scientist at Sony, helped organize the first Robocup, a robot soccer tournament that attracted teams of robotics and artificial intelligence researchers to compete in the picturesque city of Nagoya, Japan. At the start of the first day, two teams of robots took to the pitch. As the machines twitched and surveyed their surroundings, a reporter asked Kitano when the match would begin. "I told him it started five minutes ago!" he says with a laugh. Such was the state of AI and robotics at the time.