Following my favorite articles, I’ve also dabbled in podcasts over the past year. While my listening wasn’t extensive like the previous article review, the few I did tune into were quite enjoyable and thus worth sharing. The majority of these podcasts feature interviews with individuals at the forefront of the current AI hype. Admittedly, my selections are heavily biased. Despite this, I’ve found these podcasts to be incredibly insightful and enjoyable, aligning well with my interests. Additionally, many of the podcasts I’ve enjoyed are episodes from the Lex Friedman Podcast. I must admit, I’m quite a fan of Lex Friedman. His podcast features remarkable content and guests. For anyone with an interest in the current whirlwind of AI developments, it’s an invaluable resource worth exploring. Sam Altman: OpenAI CEO on GPT-4, ChatGPT, and the Future of AI

Lex Fridman Podcast #367 At this point, I’ve scraped nearly all of Sam Altman’s publicly available talks, and this one stands out as a classic. Altman is undeniably intelligent and astute, although he has somewhat turned into what might be described as a corporate ‘stochastic parrot’ lately, likely due to the mix of public drama, corporate interests, and the monotony of uninformed interviewers who often rehash the same questions or just blatantly ask dumb ones. However, this interview is an exception. It might feel a bit dated since it was conducted just after the release of GPT-4, but it’s still a worthwhile listen. For a more recent and insightful interview, I recommend checking out his conversation with Axios at Davos 2024. Ilya Sutskever: Deep Learning

Lex Fridman Podcast #94 I really like ilya. For those unfamiliar, he is the co-founder and the former Cheif Scientist at OpenAI. Normally I listen to podcasts at 2x speed, but with Ilya, I have to listen to 1x cause he speaks in such a dense manner. His insights allow for a kind of reverse engineering of his thought process on intelligence, providing an intuitive approach to tackling AGI and alignment challenges. I highly recommend not just this podcast but all available recordings of him, including this cool short documentary by The Guardian. Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI) and Jensen Huang (NVIDIA CEO): AI Today and Vision of the Future (3/2023) In this episode, Ilya is interviewed by Jensen Huang, and once again, he provides fascinating observations, this time about next-word prediction and related topics. It’s also intriguing to see how both have been deeply involved in the initial use of GPUs in the rise of neural networks. George Hotz: Tiny Corp, Twitter, AI Safety, Self-Driving, GPT, AGI & God

Lex Fridman Podcast #387 This was, by far, the most entertaining podcast I listened to this year. George Hotz is a fucking legend. He doesn’t give a shit and talks the way he wants. But he has a big brain and is really on point. Witty and scathing. I find myself laughing throughout the podcast, and even Lex couldn’t take his bullshit with a straight face. Jailbreaking the Simulation with George Hotz

SXSW 2019 Another fantastic George Hotz rant, this time on the concept of simulation. You can see he has a hacker manifesto imprinted on his brain and really appreciate his balls. I can’t believe this was hosted at SXSW! Andrej Karpathy: Tesla AI, Self-Driving, Optimus, Aliens, and AGI

Lex Fridman Podcast #333 Andrej Karpathy is another remarkably intelligent individual, with a demeanor that’s more approachable and amiable compared to Ilya Sutskever and George Hotz. While this podcast might seem boring in comparison to Hotz’s, it’s still filled with plenty of insights. Guillaume Verdon: Beff Jezos, E/acc Movement, Physics, Computation & AGI

Lex Fridman Podcast #407 Recently, I tuned into his content amidst all the e/acc and EA shitshow unfolding at Silicon Valley. Initially, I pegged him as just another provocative shitposter on X (and yes, he definitely still fits that bill), but it turns out he’s an incredibly sharp individual who knows his stuff. His way of speaking, though, is steeped in memetics. He makes statements like e/acc’s goal is to awaken the human techno-capital memetic machine and hyperstitiously fuel its expansion. I mean, props for conceiving e/acc in the first place, but seriously, what the hell? Initially, I was torn between taking him seriously or dismissing it as trolling, but it seems he is a sensible guy in real life. That wraps up my list for now. I’m looking forward to diving into a broader range of topics this year. Happy listening!