Would anyone recommend this over doing a masters degree in the similar area of study but at a local university (ie. not Standford)?
Whether that provides more value or employment opportunity I cannot say, but it is encouraging to see more to universities offering an alternative to traditional degree programs.
I think there's a path for non-MS, non-PhD backgrounds, but probably not now. Outside of the big companies, ML/AI is often a solution without a problem. So until they learn practical application I think supply will outnumber demand and most of the jobs will go to PhD AI/statistics backgrounds.
I would say just the opposite. There isn't a business too small to benefit from ML/AI. That is, assuming you acknowledge that there's more to ML/AI than "deep learning". Not everybody needs a deep neural network. Sometimes you just need linear regression or a random forest.
If you come at it from that point of view, the knowledge you gain from taking Andrew Ng's machine learning course is enough to create value for companies / organizations.
A lot of the discussions on this topic here on HN seem to be based on an assumption that you have to be doing cutting edge original research to be useful. I think that's very far from the case.
Now the problem is, does the mom and pop bakery on the corner know that they could benefit from ML? And perhaps the more salient question is "are they looking for somebody to do ML for them"? The answer is probably "no" in both cases, so you might have to do some work to sell to that market. But the value you can create is real. Help them optimize production so they throw away less bread on slow days, etc. and you're talking direct business impact.
I suspect that there will be, for a long time, a wide continuum in terms of how ML/AI skills can help create value. Which means there will be a lot of ways to leverage this field from a career standpoint.
That's not exactly what I'm saying. There are ML problems everywhere, opportunities to create efficiencies, new products, etc. out of existing data and processes. But nobody hires an AI/ML candidate to come in and tell them what to do. Nobody says "we want to dabble in ML somehow but don't have any pressing needs, can you start at $140K?"
Those businesses need to recognize the opportunities first before the market will expand.
Not all of the opportunities are reasonable (or make any kind of sense at all) but if you take a shitty hire at a place with interesting data you can have fun.
I can hardly count the number of organisations which now want to project the idea of being "innovative" and are excited to slap the coconut shells over their ears and try waving down planes with a stick.
There's still a surprisingly huge number of companies still hiring "blockchain consultants" even though they're rapidly heading into the "despair" phase of the hype cycle.
If you're a low cap stock or even a tired brick and mortar, two ML hires and a plausible investor story gives your graph a serious bump.
The difference between blockchain bull()$& and ML bull()$& that is the ML could actually have legs. Mostly it'll just tell you stuff that someone who understands market actually knew though.
Based on my experience, which I won't re-iterate here - the various MOOCs I've taken (and currently the Udacity Nanodegree) would not be anywhere close to a masters in the subject (unless I am severely overestimating a masters - but I don't think so).
TBH - they would probably equate closer to an Associates, at best.
This offering from Stanford? Not sure - but I still don't think it would be the equivalent. I'm not saying it wouldn't be worthwhile, but I think if your goal is a deep level of knowledge and understanding of the subject, then a quality masters program for CompSci or similar would be the better path.
You actually study, partner with, and test along-side Stanford MS/PhD students. Not to mention the accountability factor, since you paid $5k for the class you better take it seriously.
I'm now working in the ML/AI research division of big-4, all I needed (and all hiring teams needed to see on my resume) were a couple of these classes (with good internal performance ratings).
Having said that, my employer paid for these classes. No way I would pay this price out of pocket. There are probably much cheaper ways to get the same knowledge.
I have interest in AI, but I'm not sure how companies would see this online degree (even through it is from Stanford).