Do you know about Lex Fridman’s podcasts where he interviews interesting people – for hours?
An AI researcher at MIT himself, Fridman got this idea of interviewing interesting people in depth. He began it with his 2018 interview with MIT physicist Max Tegmark, the Swedish scientist who is also deeply involved in the progess of AI. That interview lasted ‘only’ 1.4 hours, but produced so many visits to Fridman’s blog that it quickly took off and has become one of the most followed on the internet.
One reason for its success, was his choice of Tegmark, who is open to thinking about almost anything, and combines that with a delightful sense of humor. Fridman isn’t far behind him on both counts, so the two together, who are obviously friends, was entertaining.
Not surprisingly they did two more, the last one only a couple of months ago, when they discussed the proposal by Tegmark and some other scientists that AI research be put on hold until the rest of humanity, especially our legislators, can catch up to the AI intelligence explosion led by the Chat GTB bots.
It was interesting to hear that even the AI research community was taken by surprise by this sudden emergence of AI – just how intelligent is it? If you would like to watch that, here it is, this time almost 3 hours:
But if you’re not interested in physics or AI, don’t worry, Fridman has more.
For example, there’s his 3 hour interview with Fiona Hill, now famous as one of the whistleblowers re Trump’s attempts to extort political favours from Ukrine’s president Zelensky. Besides discussing her interesting career and other things, they include the psychology of Vladimir Putin and the future of the Ukraine. Don’t be disturbed when they start talking in Russian (Fridman is is Ukraine-born Russian), for it doesn’t last long.
There seems to be no limit to what Fridman can deal with, and how long he’s willing to devote to something. You can listen to him interview Mark Zuckerberg, chess champion Magnus Carlsen, former chess champion, political enemy of Putin and AI researcher combined, Gary Kasparov, or controversial Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu.
This week I spend part of each evening listening to his 4 + hour interview with the fascinating (physicist/AI robotics researcher) Stephen Wolfram. That conversation takes flight, rises high and refuses to come down, so much so that I’m going to have to do a post on it alone.
Alan Conrad 