I find Lex Fridman to be the most boring podcaster on the planet. And I have heard plenty of drones in the past, but he takes it to the next level.
I think esp in the AI field, he has enough knowledge to ask the right questions, which allow the guests to really go into depth into their thought process.
But then I remember entire forums full of people that consider Rationality to be a defining trait exist. And I don't think they care much about advertising, seeing how "Effective Altruism" now has hundreds of millons (billions) of dollars and chateaus.
IMO there are other podcasters that have better guests and are much more interesting. Here's one https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w (Curt Jaimungal)
Also I have literally never heard him boast about being a professor, he basically doesn’t say anything about his work on the podcast at all other than that he works in AI.
Yeah, “I will interview Vladimir Putin” — thanks but no :S
I've listened to at least dozens of his podcasts and I have never heard anything like this. You may be thinking of something else. It does come up that he used to work with self-driving cars but only when it's relevant, it doesn't come across as boasting IMO (he doesn't even claim to be an expert, only familiar with the main ideas of the time).
The less Lex is talking and the more the person he's interviewing is talking, the better.
BTW if anyone who enjoyed the van Rossum and Carmack interviews has any suggestions on other episodes I might like, I'd love to have them.
An example I've noticed: A guest will have essentially addressed a question Lex has planned for later in the interview, but Lex still asks it without any sort of modification/acknowledgment of what the guest has already said, leading to a lot of repetitive talk.
He also basically ignores statements that conflict with his view.
What was super secret? LLMs had been around for a while on July 2022. Also, all of the hype around LLMs since then is due to OpenAI's releases, so why would Hassabis be opposed to discussing it?
It's why you see guest execs interested in controlling a narrative like Bourla, Zuckerberg, Altman...
I took it as fast as I could because the researchers at the companies did a great job, but still how he talked about it was unscientific.
Lex Fridman: charisma is a dangerous thing. Flaws in communication style is a feature, not a bug in general, at least for humans in power.
This is not a quality I know in many people, it’s very rare. It also doesn’t make him look good as an interviewer, but it does make for good interviews.
I also find the calibre of his guests much more appealing than many other podcasts.