The funny thing is his questions to her were terrible. But she rescued it anyway.
But I think he has improved markedly as an interviewer I will say
For example, at some point I grew very tired of the superficiality of the questions that Lex Friedman asks his very technical guests. He seems to be more interested into taking the conversation into a philosophy freshman's essay about technology instead of talking about technology itself.
Hearing the Dwarkesh podcast was a breath of fresh air in that regard.
The marketing effect was them catching the wave at the right time, and they're just surfing the hell out of it.
He kinda reminds me the of the Alex O Conner -same age group -very smart but inexperienced with the heavy hitters
For deep dives into AI stuff google deep mind's podcast with Hannah Fry is very good (but obviously limited to goog stuff). I also like Lex for his tech / AI podcasts. Much better interviewer IMO, Dwarkesh talks way too much, and injects his own "insights" for my taste. I'm listening to a podcast to hear what the guests have to say, not the host.
For more light-weight "news-ish" type of podcast that I listen to while walking/driving/riding the train, in no particular order: AI & I (up to date trends, relevant guests), The AI Daily Brief (formerly The AI Breakdown - this is more to keep in touch with what's released in the past month) and any other random stuff that yt pops up for me from listening to these 4 regularly.
Fridman is quite good at letting the guest speak. The whole show is exceptionally good at keeping a conversation moving.
I think there are technical haters on Lex but that is stupid because Lex is in sales. He is selling a podcast. From a sales perspective, Lex is incredibly good.
It is like saying the chef is only a good cook because of the quality of the ingredients. Yes, exactly. The chef isn't a farmer growing their own organic vegetables for the dishes. The art is in the choice and ability to source quality ingredients and then bring it all together as a full dish.
A podcast is not a lecture or audio book.
A podcast with guests is an interview. Interviewing is a skill. The difference between a good and bad interviewer is night and day.
The IPO hype is in full swing.
I personally liked that he stayed away from navel-gazing in politics when the blogosphere/podcasts went pretty heavy into that.
It did very well on twitter with a large number of high-follower-count tech people, and soon to be high-follower-count (basically AI employees). He had followed the zeitgeists general wisdom well (bat signal, work in public, you-can-just-do-things, move-to-the-arena, You-Are-the-Average-of-the-Five-People-You-Spend-the-Most-Time-With, high-horsepower). And he's just executed very well. Other people have interviewed similar people and generally gotten lower signal content. This moxie marlinspike interview is great though - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPRi7mAGp7I .
And that girl Altoff ...
Literal nobodies suddenly interviewing Elon Musk, etc... within weeks.
Things rarely go "viral" on their own these days, everything is controlled, even who gets the stage, how the message is delivered, etc... as you have noticed.
With regards to who's behind, well, we might never know. However, as arcane as it might sound, gradient descent can take you close to the answer, or at least point you towards it.
I like this recent meme of Christof from Truman Show saying things like "now tell them that there's aliens" or crap like that.
Lex Fridman is a research scientist at MIT. <https://web.mit.edu/directory/?id=lexfridman&d=mit.edu>
Very normal stuff.
Nah, that's just reddit. At this point it's safer to take anything that's popular on reddit as either outright wrong or so heavily out of context that it's not relevant.
I doubt there are any notable research contributions from him. His actual PhD is from Drexel - Not MIT.
Not just that but I would also suggest to stop using the Internet Archive in general, as it is obviously not a reliable source of truth like Wikipedia or many news outlets with specialized people that spend a non-trivial amount of their time carefully checking all of this information.
The rest are at least 6 years old.
So what is he doing as a research scientist. Don’t get me wrong - I like his podcast. I think he gets good guests. But he’s not doing any level of research.
Lex got his PhD at Drexel over a decade ago. If he had pursued an academic career, he would most likely be an associate professor by now. Working as a researcher at a lab at a university that you aren’t a faculty member of is basically “failure to launch” at this stage.
But Lex is a successful podcaster. His dad is a successful academic and scientist (at Drexel.) Lex is not that, but he plays one on the internet.
If you want to see the mask slip, watch Lex's interview with Zelensky.