Biography:Andrej Karpathy

From HandWiki
Andrej Karpathy
Karpathy at Stanford in 2016
Born
Andrej Karpathy

(1986-10-23) 23 October 1986 (age 39)
Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia)
Alma mater
AwardsInnovators Under 35 (2020) TIME100 Most Influential People in AI (2024)[1]
Scientific career
FieldsMachine learning
Computer vision
Artificial intelligence[2]
Institutions
ThesisConnecting Images and Natural Language (2016)
Doctoral advisorFei-Fei Li
Website{{{1}}}

Andrej Karpathy (born 23 October 1986[3]) is a Slovak-Canadian computer scientist who served as the director of artificial intelligence and Autopilot Vision at Tesla. He co-founded and formerly worked at OpenAI,[4][5][6] where he specialized in deep learning and computer vision.[7][8][2][9]

Education and early life

Karpathy was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia),[10][11][12][13] and moved with his family to Toronto when he was 15.[14] He completed his Computer Science and Physics bachelor's degrees at University of Toronto in 2009[15] and his master's degree at University of British Columbia in 2011,[15] where he worked on physically simulated figures (for example, a simulated runner or a simulated person in a crowd) with his adviser Michiel van de Panne.

In 2006, Karpathy began posting videos on YouTube on his channel, badmephisto. He garnered fame by posting Rubik's cube tutorials which have been used by famous speedcubers such as Feliks Zemdegs.[16] The channel has over 9 million views as of June 2025.

Karpathy received a PhD from Stanford University in 2015 under the supervision of Fei-Fei Li, focusing on the intersection of natural language processing and computer vision, and deep learning models suited for this task.[17][18]

Career and research

He authored and was the primary instructor of the first deep learning course at Stanford, CS 231n: Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition.[19] It became one of the largest classes at Stanford, growing from 150 students in 2015 to 750 in 2017.[20]

Karpathy is a founding member of the artificial intelligence research group OpenAI,[21][22] where he was a research scientist from 2015 to 2017.[20] In June 2017 he became Tesla's director of artificial intelligence and reported to Elon Musk.[23][8][24] He was named one of MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 for 2020.[25] After taking a several-months-long sabbatical from Tesla, he announced he was leaving the company in July 2022.[26] As of February 2023, he makes YouTube videos on how to create artificial neural networks.[27]

It was reported on February 9, 2023, that Karpathy had announced he was returning to OpenAI.[28]

A year later on February 13, 2024, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed that Karpathy had left OpenAI.[29] In the same year, he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in AI.[30]

On July 16, 2024, Karpathy announced on his X account that he started a new AI education company called Eureka Labs.[31][32] Their first product was the AI course, LLM101n.[33] He also has a broader educational effort, the "Zero to Hero" series on LLM fundamentals.[34] The company also advocates for AI teaching assistants, a concept which has been criticized due to data privacy concerns and the removal of personal connection between teacher and student.[35]

In February 2025, Karpathy coined the term vibe coding to describe how AI tools allow hobbyists to construct apps and websites, just by typing prompts.[36]

References

  1. ↑ "U of T CS alumni among Time magazine's TIME100 Most Influential People in AI". https://time.com/7012851/andrej-karpathy/. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 {{Google Scholar id}} template missing ID and not present in Wikidata.
  3. ↑ "Self-reported on twitter". https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/261161354969358337. 
  4. ↑ "Tesla's Autopilot chief steps down after two years". 26 April 2018. http://www.autonews.com/article/20180426/COPY01/304269959. Retrieved 9 August 2018. 
  5. ↑ Metz, Cade (7 November 2017). "A.I. Researchers Leave Elon Musk Lab to Begin Robotics Start-Up". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/technology/artificial-intelligence-start-up.html. Retrieved 9 August 2018. 
  6. ↑ Metz, Cade (19 April 2017). "A.I. Researchers Are Making More Than $1 Million, Even at a Nonprofit". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-salaries-openai.html. Retrieved 9 August 2018. 
  7. ↑ "The Guy Who Taught AI to 'Remember' Is Launching a Startup". 28 July 2018. https://www.wired.com/2015/07/guy-taught-ai-remember-launching-startup/. Retrieved 9 August 2018. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Elon Musk has poached a top mind in AI research—from himself". 21 June 2017. https://qz.com/1011376/elon-musk-poached-andrej-karpathy-from-openai-to-be-teslas-tsla-director-of-artificial-intelligence/. Retrieved 9 August 2018. 
  9. ↑ Template:Medium.com
  10. ↑ "The Slovak, who leads the development of AI at Tesla, is leaving. It was an honor, says Musk – Živé.sk" (in en-US). 14 July 2022. https://alwaysfreshnews.com/news/world/374155/the-slovak-who-leads-the-development-of-ai-at-tesla-is-leaving-it-was-an-honor-says-musk-zive-sk/. 
  11. ↑ Živé.sk (2020-06-25). "Šéf AI v Tesle: Rodák zo Slovenska je medzi TOP 35 mladými novátormi" (in sk). https://zive.aktuality.sk/clanok/147462/sef-ai-v-tesle-rodak-zo-slovenska-je-medzi-top-35-mladymi-novatormi/. 
  12. ↑ today, newsy (2022-03-28). "The Slovak, who leads AI in Tesla, left the company for several months. He jokes with Musk about TikTok" (in en-US). https://beta.newsy-today.com/the-slovak-who-leads-ai-in-tesla-left-the-company-for-several-months-he-jokes-with-musk-about-tiktok/. 
  13. ↑ "Slovák Andrej Karpathy z Tesly patrí podľa MIT medzi 35 top inovátorov" (in sk-SK). 2020-06-23. https://www.teslamagazin.sk/andrej-karpathy-tesla-ocenenie-mit/. 
  14. ↑ "Next Generation Machine Learning - Training Deep Learning Models in a Browser: Andrej Karpathy Interview | DataScienceWeekly.org" (in en-US). DataScienceWeekly.org. https://www.datascienceweekly.org/data-scientist-interviews/training-deep-learning-models-browser-andrej-karpathy-interview. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Andrej Karpathy Academic Website" (in en). https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/. 
  16. ↑ "I am Feliks Zemdegs, Rubik's cube world record holder. AMA | BestofAMA". https://bestofama.com/amas/15v3av. 
  17. ↑ Karpathy, Andrej (2016). Connecting Images and Natural Language. stanford.edu (PhD thesis). Stanford University.
  18. ↑ "Does 'robo-journalism' pose a threat to reporters?". 23 March 2017. https://www.irishtimes.com/business/innovation/does-robo-journalism-pose-a-threat-to-reporters-1.3019182. Retrieved 9 August 2018. 
  19. ↑ "Stanford University CS231n: Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition". http://cs231n.stanford.edu/2015/. 
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 "Andrej Karpathy". https://karpathy.ai/. 
  21. ↑ "Introducing OpenAI" (in en). 2015-12-12. https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/. 
  22. ↑ Fan, Shelly (2015-12-20). "Inside OpenAI: Will Transparency Protect Us From Artificial Intelligence Run Amok?" (in en-US). https://singularityhub.com/2015/12/20/inside-openai-will-transparency-protect-us-from-artificial-intelligence-run-amok/. 
  23. ↑ Etherington, Darrell (2017-06-21). "Tesla hires deep learning expert Andrej Karpathy to lead Autopilot vision" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/20/tesla-hires-deep-learning-expert-andrej-karpathy-to-lead-autopilot-vision/. 
  24. ↑ "Tesla hired a top AI expert to lead a critical aspect of Autopilot -- here's what we know". 22 June 2017. https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-andrej-karpathy-autopilot-vision-2017-6. 
  25. ↑ "Andrej Karpathy (Innovators Under 35 2020)". MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/innovator/andrej-karpathy/. Retrieved 8 September 2022. 
  26. ↑ Kolodny, Lora (2022-07-13). "Tesla AI leader Andrej Karpathy announces he's leaving the company" (in en). https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/13/tesla-ai-leader-andrej-karpathy-announces-hes-leaving-the-company.html. 
  27. ↑ "Andrej Karpathy - YouTube". https://www.youtube.com/@AndrejKarpathy. 
  28. ↑ @karpathy. "Some personal news: I am joining OpenAI (again :)). Like many others both in/out of AI, I am very inspired by the impact of their work and I have personally benefited greatly from it. The future potential is especially exciting; it is a great pleasure to jump back in and build!🪄". https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1623476659369443328.  Missing or empty |date= (help)
  29. ↑ "OpenAI Researcher Andrew Karpathy Departs". 13 February 2024. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-researcher-andrej-karpathy-departs. Retrieved 13 February 2024. 
  30. ↑ Chow, Andrew R. (2024-09-05). "Andrej Karpathy: The 100 Most Influential People in AI 2024". Time. https://time.com/7012851/andrej-karpathy/. Retrieved 2025-06-26. 
  31. ↑ @karpathy. "Excited to share that I am starting an AI+Education company called Eureka Labs🪄". https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1813263734707790301.  Missing or empty |date= (help)
  32. ↑ "OpenAI Co-Founder Andrej Karpathy Announces Eureka Labs, an AI Education Startup" (in en). Inc.com. https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/openai-co-founder-andrej-karpathy-announces-eureka-labs-an-ai-education-startup.html. 
  33. ↑ "Eureka Labs". https://eurekalabs.ai/. 
  34. ↑ "Neural Networks: Zero To Hero". https://karpathy.ai/zero-to-hero.html. 
  35. ↑ Vee, Annette (2024-08-20). "AI pioneers want bots to replace human teachers – here's why that's unlikely" (in en-US). https://theconversation.com/ai-pioneers-want-bots-to-replace-human-teachers-heres-why-thats-unlikely-235754#:~:text=OpenAI%20co-founder%20Andrej%20Karpathy,to%20%E2%80%9Cpersonally%20tutor%20all%208. 
  36. ↑ Roose, Kevin (2025-02-27). "Not a Coder? With A.I., Just Having an Idea Can Be Enough." (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/technology/personaltech/vibecoding-ai-software-programming.html. 
  1. Official website of Eureka Labs
  2. Official GitHub account of Eureka Labs
  3. Official Discord account of Eureka Labs
  4. Andrej Karpathy at Twitter
  5. Andrej Karpathy at GitHub
  6. Andrej Karpathy at YouTube



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