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Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

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Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#31

Lex is bringing CS nerdiness to mainstream culture by mixing poetry/music/fitness/philosophy and I don't get why are you so bitter about it. Yes, he didn't ask the nitty gritty questions we'd like to hear from Donald Knuth or Jim Keller or dozens of quantum computing, computational biology etc researchers he has interviewed. But if you read their blogs, that's what they like about their appearance on the podcast. The…

Slightly off topic but I love little gems in his podcast that take me down rabbit holes. For instance, while interviewing James Gosling, inventor of Java, he asked what a virtual machine was and this was the answer:

> [01:29:20] So And what is it? So the Java virtual machine, you can think of it in different ways. Because it was carefully designed to have different ways of viewing it, so one view of it that most people don't really realize is there is that you can view it as sort of an encoding of the abstract syntax tree in reverse Polish notation. I don't know if that makes any sense at all. I could explain it and that would blow all of our time. But the other way to think of it and the way that it ends up being explained is that it's it's like the the instruction set of an abstract machine that's designed such that you can translate that abstract machine to a physical machine. And the reason that that's important. So if you win back to the early 90s when we were talking to all of these these companies doing consumer electronics.

To have some fun I asked my coworker who is a lot smarter than me what that means which led to a fun 30 minute tangent.

https://www.happyscribe.com/public/lex-fridman-podcast-artif...

https://lexfridman.com/james-gosling/

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#32
post #20

His interview with Jim Keller is a real waste. He's not a bad interviewer, but having Jim Keller's once in a blue moon interview done by someone who doesn't even know what branch prediction is a loss. I have no reason to believe he isn't a good AI researcher, but he doesn't seem to know much about programming - that a branch predictor that just predicts what happened last time next time gets it right about 80% of the…

Why would an AI researcher need to be an expert programmer?

Furthermore, why would an AI researcher need to have intricate understandings of the inner workings of modern CPUs?

Lex is not a software engineer. Lex is not an electrical engineer.

I know people actively working in the AI/ML field who don't even have a B.A./B.S. - they're literally self-taught from watching YouTube videos; reading books, textbooks, articles; and listening to podcasts. And after all, wasn't that supposed to be the ultimate end-goal of all this high technology we've created for ourselves? To smash the Ivory Tower? To democratize knowledge for anyone who's willing to pursue it? These people don't understand the finer points of programming and they damn sure don't understand the finer points of CPU design... why should they? You have finite time in your day, and every hour you spend understanding the intricacies of one thing, that's an hour you've lost to understanding something else.

The promise of the Internet was supposed to be something to interconnect humanity so we could share amongst each other. Well part of that promise is relying on the expertise of others to help us, instead of having to acquire that expertise for ourselves.

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#33
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I find many of his interviews to be boring these days.

Can you share what interviews you enjoy more?

ones where he has CS researchers / pioneers like Dennis Richie or Chris Latter, well known AI researchers like David Silver, or people from somewhat AI related fields like biology or neuroscience

other non-AI guests I'm sure are plenty interesting, that's just not what I'm looking for in a podcast

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#34
post #20

His interview with Jim Keller is a real waste. He's not a bad interviewer, but having Jim Keller's once in a blue moon interview done by someone who doesn't even know what branch prediction is a loss. I have no reason to believe he isn't a good AI researcher, but he doesn't seem to know much about programming - that a branch predictor that just predicts what happened last time next time gets it right about 80% of the…

He does know what branch prediction is, he is a CS graduate, That was just for his audience.

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#35

Lex Fridman is a guy who talks about being open minded and humble then proceeds to block everyone that doesn't share the same set of opinions. Seems only capable of asking the same set of questions as well.

Lex is a creep. Amazing he's managed to fool so many people into subscribing to his mediocre podcast.

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#36
post #28

I find it hard to listen to his Podcasts because of his "philosophical" questions that often are just a regurgitation of stereotypes. I do listen to some of his interviews, because he gets guests that rarely give long interviews like Chris Lattner, Donald Knuth and the like. He doesn't seem to do any deep prep for any of any of the guests and ends up providing his opinion on things like "the Russian soul" or whether…

I’m largely in agreement.

Perhaps harsh, but while I’d love to hear more from the guests - I find his interview style insufferable and his questions usually irritating. So much to the point that I avoid stuff he’s in.

A lot of the philosophical questions show he hasn’t read the AGI stuff, Bostrom, Yudkowsky, etc. and it’s frustrating to listen to someone who isn’t aware of some of the basic ideas.

I get a strong sense of bullshit too which makes it hard to listen to because I have to second guess everything. It feels like listening to sophomore undergrad philosophy.

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#37
post #5

I personally liked the podcast before he rebranded it around himself. Lex is a good host who is smart enough to hold conversations with his guests, but the main appeal was always still the guests as it was the only podcast I was aware of that has only experts in CS and related fields to talk about AI and other topics he still does this under the newer iteration of his podcast, but since shifting it to "the smart man'…

Some others that you might enjoy:

Mindscape (deep dives on various topics, host is a theoretical physicist): https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/

Brain Inspired (AI & neuroscience interviews): https://braininspired.co/

Thesis Review (interviews with researchers about their PhD thesis): https://cs.nyu.edu/~welleck/podcast.html

Machine Learning Street Talk (discussions & interviews about ML): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMLtBahI5DMrt0NPvDSoIRQ

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#38
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you put it in quotes? He did AI research and published papers at MIT, also he taught a (or more) Deep Learning course at MIT with lots of participants, the lecture recordings are available on YouTube. I think it's quite clear he knows his stuff and isn't a bullshit artist at all. He is well prepared for the interviews, he listens intently and asks important and curious questions to high profile researchers. Th…

I've only listened to a dozen or so episodes, mostly non-AI related, but I can't really get a grasp on wether Friedman remembers any undergraduate level CS (or more advanced software engineering for that matter). Maybe it's just a schtick to make it more approachable for "non-HN" listeners, but in the episode with Jim Keller it almost became painful. After all Friedman has a PhD in Computer Science, I would have expe…

This also resonates with me. He sometimes doesn't know the things which should be known even to a CS undergrad!!

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#39
post #34
post #20

His interview with Jim Keller is a real waste. He's not a bad interviewer, but having Jim Keller's once in a blue moon interview done by someone who doesn't even know what branch prediction is a loss. I have no reason to believe he isn't a good AI researcher, but he doesn't seem to know much about programming - that a branch predictor that just predicts what happened last time next time gets it right about 80% of the…

He does know what branch prediction is, he is a CS graduate, That was just for his audience.

If it was just for his audience why does he say "that blows my mind" or something to that effect?

Re: Show HN: Lex Fridman AI Podcast Search

#40
post #5

I personally liked the podcast before he rebranded it around himself. Lex is a good host who is smart enough to hold conversations with his guests, but the main appeal was always still the guests as it was the only podcast I was aware of that has only experts in CS and related fields to talk about AI and other topics he still does this under the newer iteration of his podcast, but since shifting it to "the smart man'…

I have only been listening to Lex's podcast for a few months, so I don't know a lot about its history. When did this rebranding take place?
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