On Tuesday, former OpenAI researcher Andrej Karpathy announced the formation of a new AI learning platform called Eureka Labs. The venture aims to create an “AI native” educational experience, with its first offering focused on teaching students how to build their own large language model (LLM).
“It’s still early days but I wanted to announce the company so that I can build publicly instead of keeping a secret that isn’t,” Karpathy wrote on X.
While the idea of using AI in education isn’t particularly new, Karpathy’s approach hopes to pair expert-designed course materials with an AI-powered teaching assistant based on an LLM, aiming to provide personalized guidance at scale. This combination seeks to make high-quality education more accessible to a global audience.
The platform’s inaugural course, LLM101n, targets an undergraduate-level audience. It will walk students through the process of training an AI system called a “Storyteller AI Large Language Model” that will “create, refine and illustrate little stories.” Eureka Labs will offer this course online at first, then through in-person groups in the future.
Karpathy no stranger to AI education
Karpathy’s roots in AI go deep. In 2015, he received a PhD from Stanford University under computer scientist Dr. Fei-Fei Li. He was one of the founding members of OpenAI as a research scientist, then moved to Tesla to become its senior director of AI between 2017 and 2022. In 2023, Karpathy rejoined OpenAI for a year, departing in February.
This new venture builds on Karpathy’s track record of AI education. Over the past year, Karpathy has posted several highly regarded tutorials covering AI concepts on YouTube, including an instructional video about how to build an LLM from scratch, which currently has 405 million views. The videos have showcased his ability to break down complex topics for a broader audience.
“@EurekaLabsAI is the culmination of my passion in both AI and education over ~2 decades,” Karpathy wrote on X. “My interest in education took me from YouTube tutorials on Rubik’s cubes to starting CS231n at Stanford, to my more recent Zero-to-Hero AI series. While my work in AI took me from academic research at Stanford to real-world products at Tesla and AGI research at OpenAI. All of my work combining the two so far has only been part-time, as side quests to my ‘real job,’ so I am quite excited to dive in and build something great, professionally and full-time.”
Eureka Labs’ vision extends beyond its initial AI course, hinting at a broader curriculum that could span various subjects. “Today, we are heads down building LLM101n,” the announcement reads, “but we look forward to a future where AI is a key technology for increasing human potential. What would you like to learn?“
