Andrej Karpathy

Computer scientist and AI researcher, known for deep learning education (Stanford CS231n, YouTube "Neural Networks: Zero to Hero"), founding Eureka Labs, and serving as Senior Director of AI at Tesla and as a founding member of OpenAI.

Influences & Inspirations

Based on primary sources — interviews, essays, and posts where Andrej directly cited these thinkers as influences.

Geoffrey Hinton
Entry point into deep learning; audited Hinton's Neural Networks class at University of Toronto circa 2007-2008.
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Fei-Fei Li
PhD advisor at Stanford; co-built CS231n with her.
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Richard Feynman
Adopts Feynman's principle "If I can't build it, I don't understand it" as a personal mantra.
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Richard Sutton
Engaged deeply with Sutton's framework on building AGI.
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Recommends

Who Andrej thinks you should be reading.

Key Works