What is the state of the art of artificial intelligence (AI) in China and the United States? How does language recognition differ for Chinese and English? And what’s up with self-driving cars?

To answer these and many other questions, Kaiser and Jeremy talk to Andrew Ng, founder and chairman of Coursera, an associate professor in the department of computer science at Stanford University, and the chief scientist of Baidu, where he heads up the company’s research on deep learning and AI. The discussion delves into the differences between Chinese and American engineers, entrepreneurial culture in China, artificial neural networks, augmented reality, and the role big internet companies and their resources play in advancing AI. Check out the SupChina backgrounder on their conversation here.

Recommendations:

Jeremy: Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen by Larry McMurtry, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove and co-writer of the screenplay Brokeback Mountain.

Andrew: Talking to Humans (free download).

Kaiser: Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart, the series from The New York Times on the Arab Spring and its aftermath, by Scott Anderson.