Lex Fridman Podcast
Conversations about science, technology, history, philosophy and the nature of intelligence, consciousness, love, and power. Lex is an AI researcher at MIT and beyond.
#491 – OpenClaw: The Viral AI Agent that Broke the Internet – Peter Steinberger
12 Feb 2026
Peter Steinberger is the creator of OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent framework that’s the fastest-growing project in GitHub history. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors:
#490 – State of AI in 2026: LLMs, Coding, Scaling Laws, China, Agents, GPUs, AGI
1 Feb 2026
Nathan Lambert and Sebastian Raschka are machine learning researchers, engineers, and educators. Nathan is the post-training lead at the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and the author of The RLHF Book.
#489 – Paul Rosolie: Uncontacted Tribes in the Amazon Jungle
13 Jan 2026
Paul Rosolie is a naturalist, explorer, author of a new book titled Junglekeeper, and is someone who has dedicated his life to protecting the Amazon rainforest. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out
#488 – Infinity, Paradoxes that Broke Mathematics, Gödel Incompleteness & the Multiverse – Joel David Hamkins
31 Dec 2025
Joel David Hamkins is a mathematician and philosopher specializing in set theory, the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of infinity, and he’s the #1 highest-rated user on MathOverflow. He
#487 – Irving Finkel: Deciphering Secrets of Ancient Civilizations & Flood Myths
12 Dec 2025
Irving Finkel is a scholar of ancient languages and a longtime curator at the British Museum, renowned for his expertise in Mesopotamian history and cuneiform writing. He specializes in reading and
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life
30 Nov 2025
Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts University working on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation in biological systems. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors:
#485 – David Kirtley: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and the Future of Energy
17 Nov 2025
David Kirtley is a nuclear fusion engineer and CEO of Helion Energy, a company working on building the world’s first commercial fusion power plant by 2028. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out
#484 – Dan Houser: GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar, Absurd & Future of Gaming
31 Oct 2025
Dan Houser is co-founder of Rockstar Games and is a legendary creative mind behind Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Red Dead Redemption series of video games. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our
#483 – Julia Shaw: Criminal Psychology of Murder, Serial Killers, Memory & Sex
14 Oct 2025
Julia Shaw is a criminal psychologist and author who in her books explores human nature, including psychopathy, violent crime, the psychology of evil, police interrogation, false memory manipulation,
Leonard Susskind: Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, and Black Holes
26 Sep 2019
Leonard Susskind is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is widely regarded as one of the fathers of
Regina Barzilay: Deep Learning for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment
23 Sep 2019
Regina Barzilay is a professor at MIT and a world-class researcher in natural language processing and applications of deep learning to chemistry and oncology, or the use of deep learning for early
Colin Angle: iRobot
19 Sep 2019
Colin Angle is the CEO and co-founder of iRobot, a robotics company that for 29 years has been creating robots that operate successfully in the real world, not as a demo or on a scale of dozens, but
François Chollet: Keras, Deep Learning, and the Progress of AI
14 Sep 2019
François Chollet is the creator of Keras, which is an open source deep learning library that is designed to enable fast, user-friendly experimentation with deep neural networks. It serves as an
Vijay Kumar: Flying Robots
8 Sep 2019
Vijay Kumar is one of the top roboticists in the world, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dean of Penn Engineering, former director of GRASP lab, or the General Robotics, Automation,
Yann LeCun: Deep Learning, Convolutional Neural Networks, and Self-Supervised Learning
31 Aug 2019
Yann LeCun is one of the fathers of deep learning, the recent revolution in AI that has captivated the world with the possibility of what machines can learn from data. He is a professor at New York
Jeremy Howard: fast.ai Deep Learning Courses and Research
27 Aug 2019
Jeremy Howard is the founder of fast.ai, a research institute dedicated to make deep learning more accessible. He is also a Distinguished Research Scientist at the University of San Francisco, a
Pamela McCorduck: Machines Who Think and the Early Days of AI
23 Aug 2019
Pamela McCorduck is an author who has written on the history and philosophical significance of artificial intelligence, the future of engineering, and the role of women and technology. Her books
Keoki Jackson: Lockheed Martin
19 Aug 2019
Keoki Jackson is the CTO of Lockheed Martin, a company that through its long history has created some of the most incredible engineering marvels that human beings have ever built, including planes
Paola Arlotta: Brain Development from Stem Cell to Organoid
12 Aug 2019
Paola Arlotta is a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University. She is interested in understanding the molecular laws that govern the birth, differentiation and assembly of
George Hotz: Comma.ai, OpenPilot, and Autonomous Vehicles
5 Aug 2019
George Hotz is the founder of Comma.ai, a machine learning based vehicle automation company. He is an outspoken personality in the field of AI and technology in general. He first gained recognition
Kevin Scott: Microsoft CTO
1 Aug 2019
Kevin Scott is the CTO of Microsoft. Before that, he was the Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations at LinkedIn. And before that, he oversaw mobile ads engineering at Google. This
Gustav Soderstrom: Spotify
29 Jul 2019
Gustav Soderstrom is the Chief Research & Development Officer at Spotify, leading Product, Design, Data, Technology & Engineering teams. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence
Chris Urmson: Self-Driving Cars at Aurora, Google, CMU, and DARPA
22 Jul 2019
Chris Urmson was the CTO of the Google Self-Driving Car team, a key engineer and leader behind the Carnegie Mellon autonomous vehicle entries in the DARPA grand challenges and the winner of the DARPA
Kai-Fu Lee: AI Superpowers – China and Silicon Valley
15 Jul 2019
Kai-Fu Lee is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures that manages a 2 billion dollar dual currency investment fund with a focus on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies.
Sean Carroll: The Nature of the Universe, Life, and Intelligence
10 Jul 2019
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech, specializing in quantum mechanics, gravity, and cosmology. He is the author of several popular books: one on the arrow of time called From Eternity
Jeff Hawkins: Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence
1 Jul 2019
Jeff Hawkins is the founder of Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in 2002 and Numenta in 2005. In his 2004 book titled On Intelligence, and in his research before and after, he and his team
Rosalind Picard: Affective Computing, Emotion, Privacy, and Health
17 Jun 2019
Rosalind Picard is a professor at MIT, director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-founder of two companies, Affectiva and Empatica. Over two decades ago she
Gavin Miller: Adobe Research
10 Jun 2019
Gavin Miller is the Head of Adobe Research. Adobe have empowered artists, designers, and creative minds from all professions working in the digital medium for over 30 years with software such as
Rajat Monga: TensorFlow
3 Jun 2019
Rajat Monga is an Engineering Director at Google, leading the TensorFlow team. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with
Chris Lattner: Compilers, LLVM, Swift, TPU, and ML Accelerators
13 May 2019
Chris Lattner is a senior director at Google working on several projects including CPU, GPU, TPU accelerators for TensorFlow, Swift for TensorFlow, and all kinds of machine learning compiler magic
Oriol Vinyals: DeepMind AlphaStar, StarCraft, Language, and Sequences
29 Apr 2019
Oriol Vinyals is a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. Before that he was at Google Brain and Berkeley. His research has been cited over 39,000 times. He is one of the most brilliant and
Ian Goodfellow: Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)
18 Apr 2019
Ian Goodfellow is the author of the popular textbook on deep learning (simply titled "Deep Learning"). He coined the term Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and with his 2014 paper is responsible
Elon Musk: Tesla Autopilot
12 Apr 2019
Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and a co-founder of several other companies. Video version is available on YouTube. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go
Greg Brockman: OpenAI and AGI
3 Apr 2019
Greg Brockman is the Co-Founder and CTO of OpenAI, a research organization developing ideas in AI that lead eventually to a safe & friendly artificial general intelligence that benefits and empowers
Eric Weinstein: Revolutionary Ideas in Science, Math, and Society
20 Mar 2019
Eric Weinstein is a mathematician, economist, physicist, and managing director of Thiel Capital. He formed the "intellectual dark web" which is a loosely assembled group of public intellectuals
Leslie Kaelbling: Reinforcement Learning, Planning, and Robotics
12 Mar 2019
Leslie Kaelbling is a roboticist and professor at MIT. She is recognized for her work in reinforcement learning, planning, robot navigation, and several other topics in AI. She won the IJCAI
Kyle Vogt: Cruise Automation
7 Feb 2019
Kyle Vogt is the President and CTO of Cruise Automation, leading an effort in trying to solve one of the biggest robotics challenges of our time: vehicle autonomy. He is the co-founder of 2
Tomaso Poggio: Brains, Minds, and Machines
19 Jan 2019
Tomaso Poggio is a professor at MIT and is the director of the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines. Cited over 100,000 times, his work has had a profound impact on our understanding of the nature
Tuomas Sandholm: Poker and Game Theory
28 Dec 2018
Tuomas Sandholm is a professor at CMU and co-creator of Libratus, which is the first AI system to beat top human players at the game of Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold'em. He has published over 450
Juergen Schmidhuber: Godel Machines, Meta-Learning, and LSTMs
23 Dec 2018
Juergen Schmidhuber is the co-creator of long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) which are used in billions of devices today for speech recognition, translation, and much more. Over 30 years, he has
Pieter Abbeel: Deep Reinforcement Learning
16 Dec 2018
Pieter Abbeel is a professor at UC Berkeley, director of the Berkeley Robot Learning Lab, and is one of the top researchers in the world working on how to make robots understand and interact with the
Stuart Russell: Long-Term Future of AI
9 Dec 2018
Stuart Russell is a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and a co-author of the book that introduced me and millions of other people to AI, called Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.
Eric Schmidt: Google
4 Dec 2018
Eric Schmidt was the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, and its executive chairman from 2011 to 2017, guiding the company through a period of incredible growth and a series of world-changing
Jeff Atwood: Stack Overflow and Coding Horror
29 Nov 2018
Jeff Atwood is a co-founder of Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange, websites that are visited by millions of people every day. Much like with Wikipedia, it is difficult to understate the impact on
Guido van Rossum: Python
22 Nov 2018
Guido van Rossum is the creator of Python, one of the most popular and impactful programming languages in the world. Video version is available on YouTube. If you would like to get more information
Vladimir Vapnik: Statistical Learning
16 Nov 2018
Vladimir Vapnik is the co-inventor of support vector machines, support vector clustering, VC theory, and many foundational ideas in statistical learning. His work has been cited over 170,000 times.
Yoshua Bengio: Deep Learning
20 Oct 2018
Yoshua Bengio, along with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann Lecun, is considered one of the three people most responsible for the advancement of deep learning during the 1990s, 2000s, and now. Cited 139,000
Steven Pinker: AI in the Age of Reason
17 Oct 2018
Steven Pinker is a professor at Harvard and before that was a professor at MIT. He is the author of many books, several of which have had a big impact on the way I see the world for the better. In
Christof Koch: Consciousness
2 Sep 2018
A conversation with Christof Koch as part of MIT course on Artificial General Intelligence. Video version is available on YouTube. He is the President and Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen
Max Tegmark: Life 3.0
26 Aug 2018
A conversation with Max Tegmark as part of MIT course on Artificial General Intelligence. Video version is available on YouTube. He is a Physics Professor at MIT, co-founder of the Future of Life