Sebastian Thrun AMA on reddit | Hacker News Reader

Sebastian Thrun AMA on reddit

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175 pointsih13 comments

There's also one from a couple days ago that he responded to earlier today.

This response re the self driving car was particularly interesting-

"While the technology has progressed a lot, it still can't handle all situations we want it to handle. But on the positive end, I have taken the car a number of times to Lake Tahoe (highway only), and every time it drove flawlessly."

Here's a Charlie Rose interview with Sebastian Thrun: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321

It struck me how the overwhelmingly positive response to his online Stanford class took him by surprise and really spurred him to want to open up education. I guess even the most accomplished among us can become inspired.

Here's a youtube link of the interview for devices that do not support flash http://youtu.be/FzpCcJ8sXik

Absolutely.

In my experience the most genuinely accomplished people are always getting enthusiastic and inspired about one new thing or another. I think their capacity to be inspired is one of the main reasons they became accomplished in the first place.

I really liked his comment about Stanford students not getting much out of him, that they're already very brilliant, and it makes more sense for him to teach students that would get much more out of him.

Anyone else planning on doing the Intro to Statistics course?

I'm going to do it but not this hex. I need to finish up 212 first, and I'm also going to take the testing class and the social network algorithms one.

We in #Udacity on irc.freenode.net definitely are :) !

You can join via webchat if you don't have an IRC client yet: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=udacity

Very cool, added to my channel list in Textual.

Just started the Crypto course and it's paced really well, I like it.

I'm planning to, it coincides perfectly when i finish my exams! And the social algos one to.

I find it telling that in this AMA as well as a few other interviews he seems to be noticeably more excited about the educational startup that he's a CEO of than the driverless car or glass projects. I guess no matter how great an environment an employer provides (and my understanding is that Google X is an upgrade from the regular Google) there's just more excitement when you're captain of your own ship.

Or when it's new. He's been doing driverless cars for > 10 years.

I can't forget an inspiring and landmark conference communication given by Sebastian Thrun last January that struck me deeply:

http://youtu.be/SkneoNrfadk

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