No.

The class Sebastian Thrun taught on AI, was a class devoid of all the qualities that made CS 221 one of the (formerly) greatest classes in not only the CS department, but all of Stanford. His AI class was dumbed down and slapped with a Stanford logo to make people think that they were performing at the same academic level as top notch university students when in fact he had simply lowered the level of achievement so that anyone could take the class. AI is hard. Machine learning is hard. Computer science is hard. Not everyone can do it, and no online course will change that fact.

Why can I say this? These are class reviews of CS 221 from Courserank before and after Sebastian Thrun made it his flagship for online teaching.

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BEFORE:

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Note: When taught by Andrew Ng the class received no ratings less than 4/5 stars

"4/5 Stars

Autumn 2006-2007

Andrew Ng

A+

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Covers a broad spectrum of topics in AI. If you are interested in AI, but you aren't sure what area in AI you might want to take classes in or you don't know much about AI, this is a good class to take. After CS 221, you can go on to CS 229 (machine learning), CS 223B (computer vision), CS 224N (natural language processing), etc. This class is a lot of work, and most of it is valuable although not all of the programming assignments were that well designed when I took it."

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"5/5 Stars

Winter 2008-2009

Andrew Ng

A-

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Good class. Andrew isn't the most exciting lecturer, but you'll learn a lot of different AI techniques, and the programming assignments are interesting. The problem sets and midterm are heavily algebra/proof-based, so be prepared. Work through the section problems and you should be fine with that.

Since all psets, assignments, and the final project can all be done with a team, make sure you have at least 2 other people you know you can work with, or else you'll get dragged down."

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"5/5 Stars

Winter 2008-2009

Andrew Ng

CR

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

I really enjoyed this class. Very interesting topics, long and involved problem sets, and not-so-difficult programming assignments. Except, of course, for the final project. GET A GROUP ... I had to drop down to CR/NC because my partners dropped the class, and so I spent most of dead and finals weeks working on this stupid robot dog.

That being said, I loved the class."

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"5/5 Stars

Autumn 2009-2010

Andrew Ng

A-

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Terrific class with great lecture material and interesting videos. I think the Audi parallel parking itself by driving backwards at 40mph, braking, and sliding into the parking spot was what kept me going.

The problem sets make sure you really understand the material, and the programming assignments are a great way to learn Matlab. The project is HARD and time comsuming, so make sure you have time in your schedule near the end of the quarter!"

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AFTER:

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Note: Under Sebastian Thrun the class has received no rating higher than 3/5 stars, even more telling, look at the comments for Autumn 2011/12 when the online system that Udacity is based off of was rolled out for Stanford students.

"3/5 Stars

Winter 2010-2011

Sebastian B Thrun

A-

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

With Thrun class had a very different feel than it would have Ng. It skimped on the math/theory and focused on intuition and practice. I liked it less, but for people who are less interested in the math, it was an improvement."

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"3/5 Stars

Winter 2010-2011

Sebastian B Thrun

A-

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

If you can take this class with Andrew Ng I would recommend it. The version I took was pretty poorly taught. The lectures lacked both detail and clear explanations of the concepts. I feel like I came out of this class without having learned much of anything."

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"1/5 Stars

Autumn 2011-2012

Sebastian B Thrun

B

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Hands down the worst class I have taken at Stanford. Terribly taught, unresponsive and incompetent TAs, mixed up deadlines. Avoid at all costs."

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"User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

god awful. learned absolutely nothing."

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"User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

As the quarter wore on it became painfully clear that the focus on students was minimal for this class. Lectures aligned poorly with homework material, coding assignments were rarely well designed, and grading procedures were at best illogical and at worst completely incomprehensible."

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"2/5 Stars

Autumn 2011-2012

Sebastian B Thrun

A-

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

This class was a waste of time. Seriously. The only beneficial part to me was the final project. Everything else was so frustratingly simplified and easy that I wanted to slap myself for taking this class.

Here's an actual problem from the midterm that demonstrates our professor's opinion of Stanford students:

For a coin X, we know P(heads) = 0.3
What is P(tails)?

And whenever there was anything REMOTELY difficult, the teachers would, without fail, give a hint...

Just skip to 229. It may be tougher, but this class is not worth it anymore."

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"User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Hands down the worst class I have ever taken in my life. This was a joke of a class, far too easy so the curve was mind boggling (the average on the midterm was around 97% because they gave the same test to us as they did to the online class).

Essentially, this class catered to its free online constituency that doesn't pay for tuition. Seriously, I am completely ashamed of this class, and it has no place in one of the best AI universities int he world. Only take it if u need it, otherwise go straight to 229 or something else much better."

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"User had not rated this course at the time of reviewing

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

This course is useless and you should probably take it only if you have to.

The class should be the Stanford class given to anyone for free, but it has became the class for anyone given at Stanford (where we have to pay for it).

The homeworks were really easy, the only difficulty was to understand what was expected with poor indications. The real lectures sometimes conflicted with the online videos, and in this case the teachers considered the online video as the reference. This means that going to the class every morning instead of looking at free online video gives you a disadvange in this class. (confirmed by the TAs and posted on the class forums).

In one sentence : if possible take the online free class instead of paying for it. It will even be better."

RELATED:

Jeff Atwood’s blog post “Please Don’t Learn to Code” (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/please-dont-learn-t...).

Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” from Welcome to the Monkey House

Edit: Fixed whitespace

TL;DR: Learn AI Hard. Thrun make class dumb. Now anybody learn AI.