Wisdom Of Sebastian Thrun

• If you believe your activities are in the best interest of the company that employs you - yet you fear you have broken enough rules that you might be fired - then you are doing well.
• You find that Udacity classes are focused around student exercise, not lectures. Videos are minimal, often less than 90 seconds long (although some are longer). At Udacity, you will spend more time thinking on your own than listening to a professor. I feel the online medium is so amazing, we should really go beyond the replication of the classroom experience.
• For the classes starting June 25th, the timing is entirely open. You can go at your own pace. No deadlines. Your motivation should be your eagerness to learn something you care about, not a deadline.
• I wonder what happens to the idea of a text book in the video age. One of the things that frustrates me about books is that they "don't talk back". I can do the exercises, but the book won't tell me what I am doing wrong. I really want to see innovation on that end as well.
• Ever since time, and certainly through the Industrial Revolution, have seen a restructuring of the workforce. Over 90% of all people used to work in agriculture and now it's about 2% in this country (number may be inaccurate). Are we better off or worse off? I think better off.This is just my personal opinion. I believe society is wasting huge resources with "inefficiencies," and when we invent methods to overcome these inefficiencies, society tends to be better off. I think we have to be socially responsible to the people who might be negatively affected by all this, but just retaining things as they are cannot be our guiding principle going forward.
• Learning should be a lifelong endeavor. I feel we should enter the workforce soon, but keep a foot in education. Here is an example: I was taught Modula II and Lisp at college, and I would not be able to be a software engineer today with these skills. I feel the concept of a degree made sense when things moved slower, and when people died earlier. Then it made sense to be educated once and leverage those skills into a single career. Today things move really fast. In computer science, every 5-10 years there are entirely new tools, platforms, programming languages. I think society should acknowledge this. For me, the deal between Udacity and a student is a lifelong deal. We really want to offer meaningful education throughout an entire career.
• What online will do is to reach many more students, those who can't afford being in classrooms. And it'll augment classroom teaching to enable teachers to focus more on the tutoring aspects of learning, and meaningful small group interaction - over giving lectures.
• I think we should really try again the big goal: create human level intelligence. I think this is totally doable. We now have faster computer than ever before, more data than even 1,000 humans can comprehend during their live times, and much better engineering. If I ever run out of things to do, that's what I'll do.
• The best rule for project completion is to complete it. When you get frustrated, I bet you get frustrated because things don't proceed as you want them to proceed. That's a learning opportunity right there. If you give up, you miss out on the most important part: the opportunity to learn something surprising. If you understand this, and use this as a learning opportunity, and develop pride once a hurdle has been taken - you will complete your projects!
• I don't think online education will replace higher offline education. Quite the contrary. I think it'll draw more people into education. Movies draw people into theater. Radio brings people to live concerts. It's long been known that MIT's Open Courseware program has drawn students to MIT. I believe that online education will improve the educational experience and the outcomes. It'll give existing colleges and universities much more reach, and reduce their costs. 
• I think this is key to intelligent systems. In the end we build smart systems to help us, the people. Not to serve themselves. A lot of existing technology doesn't really connect to people. But.... the machine doesn't have to be human like. My calculator perfectly understands my wishes (by pushing calculator buttons) without smiling at me and asking me how I feel.
• I didn't think I had a talent. I honestly didn't care much about school, and it took me until college to realize I am actually good in math. Two things I always had were: passion, and a gentle disrespect for rules. If people say it can't be done, then likely those people are wrong. But instead of arguing things, I really tried to do things, and to keep my mind open for learning new things. So be passionate, try things, and when you get stuck don't give up. See it as an opportunity to learn something new. Every wall can be climbed, any ocean can be crossed.
• We are really focusing on learning by doing. The instructor is your tutor. I am like you - I learned nearly everything in my life by attempting to do them.

- Sebastian Thrun on Reditt Udacity Chat