Get tech news in your inbox weekday mornings. Sign up for the free Good Morning Silicon Valley newsletter. BY RYAN NAKASHIMA

PALO ALTO What does artificial intelligence researcher Andrew Ng have in common with a very depressed robot from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? Both have huge brains.

HE NAMED GOOGLE BRAIN

Googles deep-learning unit was originally called Project Marvin a possible reference to a morose and paranoid android with a brain the size of a planet from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Ng didnt like the association with this very depressed robot, he says, so he cut to the chase and changed the name to Google Brain.

A SMALL WEDDING

Ng met his roboticist wife, Carol Reiley, at a robotics conference in Kobe, Japan. They married in 2014 in Carmel, California, in a small ceremony. Ng says Reiley wanted to save money in order to invest in their future they even got their wedding bands made on a 3-D printer. And instead of a big ceremony, she put $50,000 in Drive.ai, the autonomous driving company she co-founded and leads as president. In its last funding round, the company raised $50 million.

GUESSING GAMES, COMPUTER VERSION

One of Ngs first computer programs tried to guess a number the user was thinking of. Based simply on the responses higher or lower, the computer could guess correctly after no more than seven questions.

GUESSING GAME, ACCENT VERSION

Americans tend to think I sound slightly British and the Brits think I sound horribly American, Ng says. According to my mother, I just mumble a lot.

HE LIKES BLUE SHIRTS

He buys blue button-down shirts 10 at a time from Nordstroms online. I just dont want to think about it every morning. Theres enough things that I need to decide on every day.

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Artificial intelligence expert Andrew Ng hates paranoid androids, and other fun facts - The Mercury News