Sebastian Thrun

“Technology is synonymous for connection with other people.”

“Nobody phrases it this way, but I think that artificial intelligence is almost a humanities discipline. It's really an attempt to understand human intelligence and human cognition.”

“I envision a future without traffic accidents or congestion. A future where everyone can use a car.”

“Outside the U.S., most data plans have a data limit.”

“We need to make education so much fun that students can't help but learn.”

“Call me an optimist, but in the past 300 years we have built amazing technologies which - by and large - have advanced humanity.”

“Almost all accidents take place because of human distraction.”

“I was a popular professor. My teaching ratings were usually good. I could take complicated subjects and explain them in an entertaining way.”

“Question every assumption and go towards the problem, like the way they flew to the moon. We should have more moon shots and flights to the moon in areas of societal importance.”

“I always felt that if countries knew each other better, there would be less war. Often, conflict goes with demonizing other countries and cultures.”

“I really believe that we have to work hard to make online education better and better, and eventually it's going to be really great. But like most of these things, it takes time to improve, to understand and to make things really good.”

“This is the age of disruption.”

“The individualization of learning fundamentally redefines the role of assessment.”

“We humans usually feel that we are the best at everything we do, that we can safely drive ourselves. But tens of thousands of people die every year. We need to be open to having technology assist us, to find ways in which technology makes us safer.”

“Perhaps we can get to the point where we can outsource our own personal experiences entirely into a computer - and possibly our own personality.”

“In the field of higher ed, many have asked whether (or when) digital education will replace on-campus education. I wonder the opposite. Cinema never replaced theatre. TV didn't replace radio. I wonder how different digital education will be from classrooms, and where it will lead us.”

“We're often too entrenched in existing structures and are so primed to think that if we grew up with the values and the norms, they have to be correct.”

“There are already robotic journalists. Sure, they aren't very good, but they're getting better faster than human journalists are.”

“I have been spending the better part of my professional life trying to create self-driving cars. At Google, I am working with a world-class team of engineers to turn science fiction into reality.”

“It's sad that we never get trained to leave assumptions behind.”