4 ms·

I think sadly Fridman has since left the path of conducting interesting interviews with accomplished AI researchers and now caters to a kind of vapid pseudo-phi

I think sadly Fridman has since left the path of conducting interesting interviews with accomplished AI researchers and now caters to a kind of vapid pseudo-philosophical TED-talk crowd.

ta988 5y ago
What interviews make you think that?
- phreeza 5y ago
  There were several that gave me this impression but Eric Weinstein and one about UFOs (forgot the name of the interviewee) come to mind.
  - jcims 5y ago
    It's ok man, it's not a religion. You can skip those if you don't like them. He's also had James Gosling, Don Knuth (x2), James Keller (x2), Brian Kernighan and a bunch of other legends.
    - phreeza 5y ago
      You are right of course, but this whole phenomenon really rubs me the wrong way. There is a whole host of podcasts now that provide a large audience to borderline crackpots. I believe it actually pushes people who are maybe otherwise quite intelligent to adopt such theories, because of the large audience that can now be reached with such stuff. Another good example is Avi Loeb and the Alien-Omuamua theory, explained quite well here: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/o1dhlf/comment/h23caw4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/o1dhlf/comm...
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    I'm guessing you are referring to David Fravor[1] when you say "the one about UFO's". I dunno. I'm a skeptic by nature (not just of UFO's, etc., but of almost everything) and I watched that episode and thought it was good. Fravor seemed like a sharp, knowledgeable, down-to-earth guy who was simply stating what he experienced... and went to great lengths to be clear that he wasn't necessarily positing that what he saw was caused by Little Green Men from Mars. FWIW, I don't believe that intelligent aliens are visiting Earth, although I do believe that it's likely that there (is|was|will be) intelligent life elsewhere in our universe at some point in time. Given that bias, I didn't find anything particularly objectionable in the Fravor episode. But perspectives vary, of course... [1]: https://lexfridman.com/david-fravor/ https://lexfridman.com/david-fravor/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mindcrime 5y ago
I mean, there's no question that he chose to branch out from strictly hard-core AI researchers. And I don't watch every episode, so I may have missed some of the "bad" ones, but from what I've seen, most of his interviewees are still respected / credible scientists, with a smattering of "other" mixed in here and there. In the past month or so he's had Jeffrey Shainline[1], Travis Oliphant[2], Jay McClelland[3], Douglas Lenat[4], Donald Knuth[5] and Joscha Bach[6] as guests. That's a pretty impressive group, IMO. [1]: https://www.nist.gov/people/jeff-shainline https://www.nist.gov/people/jeff-shainline [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Oliphant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Oliphant [3]: https://stanford.edu/~jlmcc/ https://stanford.edu/~jlmcc/ [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat [5]: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/ https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/ [6]: http://bach.ai/ http://bach.ai/
- phreeza 5y ago
  Yea I think I was overly harsh in my comment, see sibling reply for why this 'other' category gets me so riled up. If you ask me Joscha Bach is also somewhat in the category I mentioned, but I see your point.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Joscha is actually very accessible on Twitter (at least in replies to his tweets). Might be work picking apart one that sits funny with you to test your understanding of his positions.
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    Interesting. When I look at Joscha's background and work[1][2][3], he seems pretty credible to me. Is there anything specific he's said/done that puts him in your "other" category? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joscha_Bach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joscha_Bach [2]: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Q_yeuCUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Q_yeuCUAAAAJ&hl=en... [3]: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Synthetic-Intelligence-Architecture-Architectures/dp/0195370678 https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Synthetic-Intelligence-Arc...

I think sadly Fridman has since left the path of conducting interesting interviews with accomplished AI researchers and now caters to a kind of vapid pseudo-philosophical TED-talk crowd.

ta988 5y ago

What interviews make you think that?

phreeza 5y ago
There were several that gave me this impression but Eric Weinstein and one about UFOs (forgot the name of the interviewee) come to mind.
- jcims 5y ago
  It's ok man, it's not a religion. You can skip those if you don't like them. He's also had James Gosling, Don Knuth (x2), James Keller (x2), Brian Kernighan and a bunch of other legends.
  - phreeza 5y ago
    You are right of course, but this whole phenomenon really rubs me the wrong way. There is a whole host of podcasts now that provide a large audience to borderline crackpots. I believe it actually pushes people who are maybe otherwise quite intelligent to adopt such theories, because of the large audience that can now be reached with such stuff. Another good example is Avi Loeb and the Alien-Omuamua theory, explained quite well here: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/o1dhlf/comment/h23caw4/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/o1dhlf/comm...
- mindcrime 5y ago
  I'm guessing you are referring to David Fravor[1] when you say "the one about UFO's". I dunno. I'm a skeptic by nature (not just of UFO's, etc., but of almost everything) and I watched that episode and thought it was good. Fravor seemed like a sharp, knowledgeable, down-to-earth guy who was simply stating what he experienced... and went to great lengths to be clear that he wasn't necessarily positing that what he saw was caused by Little Green Men from Mars. FWIW, I don't believe that intelligent aliens are visiting Earth, although I do believe that it's likely that there (is|was|will be) intelligent life elsewhere in our universe at some point in time. Given that bias, I didn't find anything particularly objectionable in the Fravor episode. But perspectives vary, of course... [1]: https://lexfridman.com/david-fravor/ https://lexfridman.com/david-fravor/

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mindcrime 5y ago

I mean, there's no question that he chose to branch out from strictly hard-core AI researchers. And I don't watch every episode, so I may have missed some of the "bad" ones, but from what I've seen, most of his interviewees are still respected / credible scientists, with a smattering of "other" mixed in here and there. In the past month or so he's had Jeffrey Shainline[1], Travis Oliphant[2], Jay McClelland[3], Douglas Lenat[4], Donald Knuth[5] and Joscha Bach[6] as guests. That's a pretty impressive group, IMO. [1]: https://www.nist.gov/people/jeff-shainline https://www.nist.gov/people/jeff-shainline [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Oliphant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Oliphant [3]: https://stanford.edu/~jlmcc/ https://stanford.edu/~jlmcc/ [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat [5]: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/ https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/ [6]: http://bach.ai/ http://bach.ai/

phreeza 5y ago
Yea I think I was overly harsh in my comment, see sibling reply for why this 'other' category gets me so riled up. If you ask me Joscha Bach is also somewhat in the category I mentioned, but I see your point.
- jcims 5y ago
  Joscha is actually very accessible on Twitter (at least in replies to his tweets). Might be work picking apart one that sits funny with you to test your understanding of his positions.
- mindcrime 5y ago
  Interesting. When I look at Joscha's background and work[1][2][3], he seems pretty credible to me. Is there anything specific he's said/done that puts him in your "other" category? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joscha_Bach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joscha_Bach [2]: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Q_yeuCUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Q_yeuCUAAAAJ&hl=en... [3]: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Synthetic-Intelligence-Architecture-Architectures/dp/0195370678 https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Synthetic-Intelligence-Arc...