Andrej Karpathy, ex-head of AI at Tesla and renowned AI expert, is founding a startup aimed at transforming education through AI. Eureka Labs plans to build an "AI-native" school.
Eureka Labs wants to create an "AI-native" learning experience for all subjects. Karpathy uses physics as an example: "Imagine working through very high quality course materials together with Feynman, who is there to guide you every step of the way."
Karpathy believes that recent advances in generative AI have brought this learning experience within reach. Teachers will still design course materials, but they will be supported and scaled by an AI learning assistant optimized to guide students. This teacher-AI partnership could deliver entire curricula on a shared platform.
"If we are successful, it will be easy for anyone to learn anything, expanding education in both reach (a large number of people learning something) and extent (any one person learning a large amount of subjects, beyond what may be possible today unassisted)," Karpathy writes.
Eureka Labs' first product will be an AI course called LLM101n. This undergraduate-level course will guide students through training their own AI, similar to the AI Learning Assistant. The course material will be available online, with plans for digital and physical learning groups.
Karpathy says founding Eureka Labs fulfills his long-standing passion for AI and education, which had previously been a "side hustle" to his day job. After leaving Tesla, Karpathy returned to OpenAI, where he had previously worked in 2016. He left OpenAI again in February 2024 to pursue personal projects.
