Lex Fridman
Lex Fridman (; born 15 August 1983) is a Russian-American computer scientist and podcaster. He hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast. Early life and education 
Fridman was born in Chkalovsk, Tajikistan (at that point the Tajik SSR was part of the Soviet Union). He is of Jewish descent. His father is plasma physicist Alexander Fridman, a professor at Drexel University. His brother is Gregory Fridman, also a researcher in plasma physics. When he was about 11, Fridman's family moved from Russia to the Chicago area. He attended Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois. He then went on to obtain BS and MS degrees in computer science at Drexel University in 2010, and completed his PhD in electrical and computer engineering at Drexel in 2014. His PhD dissertation, Learning of Identity from Behavioral Biometrics for Active Authentication, was completed under the advisement of engineering educators Moshe Kam and Steven Weber and sought to "investigate the problem of active authentication on desktop computers and mobile devices". Career

MIT
In 2014, Fridman joined Google but left the company after six months. In 2015, he moved to MIT's AgeLab to work on "psychology and big-data analytics to understand driver behavior." In 2019, Fridman published a study on Tesla Autopilot finding that drivers using semi-autonomous vehicles stayed focused, contrasting with established research on how humans interact with automated systems. The study's methodology was criticized by Missy Cummings, a professor at Duke University and advisor for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who described it as "deeply flawed". AI researcher Anima Anandkumar suggested Fridman should submit his study for peer review before seeking press coverage. Following his Tesla Autopilot study, Fridman was invited to Tesla office's for an interview with Elon Musk. The study was later removed from MIT's website. In 2019, he left AgeLab and took up an unpaid role in the department of aeronautics and astronautics. As of 2023, he is a research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. Lex Fridman Podcast 
Fridman began his podcast in 2018. It was originally titled The Artificial Intelligence Podcast, but changed to The Lex Fridman Podcast in 2020. By April 2023, Fridman had recorded more than 350 episodes which have been described as "hourslong conversations" by Business Insider. Episodes of the podcast have featured, among others, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yuval Noah Harari and Mohammed El-Kurd. Reception 
According to research experts interviewed by Business Insider in April 2023, Fridman "lacks the publications, citations and conference appearances required to be taken seriously in the hypercompetitive world of academia". Computational biologist Lior Pachter said "some scientists and academics fear Fridman is contributing to the 'cacophony of misinformation'", while another AI researcher thought that Fridman may have "abandoned academic rigor in pursuit of fame". In contrast, his former colleague Sertac Karaman, LIDS's director, stated: "Dr. Fridman has been a research scientist at MIT LIDS and in our research group. I have known him for many years, and been very impressed by his ideas and his research accomplishments." Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs wrote, "Fridman is not an idealogue and seems genuine in his desire to empathetically understand leftists (he has also interviewed Richard Wolff, Steve Keen, and Noam Chomsky) and to be fair to all sides, he has hosted a debate between 'skeptical environmentalist' Bjorn Lomborg and climate journalist Andrew Revkin.” However, Robinson goes on to criticize Fridman, saying that “the Fridman podcast is an excellent way to see how the posture of neutrality actually fails to adequately challenge falsehoods and toxic beliefs.”

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21st-century American scientists
21st-century American writers
American computer scientists
American people of Russian descent
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American podcasters
American science writers
American technology writers
American YouTubers
Artificial intelligence researchers
Drexel University alumni
Engineers from Chicago
Jewish American scientists
Jewish engineers
Living people
Russian emigrants to the United States
Russian computer scientists
Russian podcasters
Russian YouTubers
Scientists from Chicago
American people of Ukrainian descent
1983 births