Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI 101), a course offered through a partnership with the Stanford School of Engineering for free online from October 10 through December 16, has received more than 70,000 pre-registration sign-ups. Participants will be allowed to register in late summer, according to ai-class.com.

The instructors, Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig are rockstars in the AI field, having worked in projects with DARPA and Google, and NASA and Sun Microsystems, respectively. The recommended (but not required) textbook for the course, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, was co-authored by Norvig and is considered a leading text in AI education.

The free course will feature video lectures and auto-graded assignments. At the end, students will receive a certificate of completion (but not a diploma). “The vision is: change the world by bringing education to places that can’t be reached today,” Thrun told the Times.

You can still request registration info through the course site; full registration is set to begin sometime in the next few weeks.
[SA]