Lex Fridman | Biography

Fridman's findings at Google was on machine learning with a focus on active authentication

Lex Fridman joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015 as an AI Researcher, a position he has held to date. His research area at MIT includes human-centered AI, particularly in the context of self-driving cars, human-robot collaboration, and machine learning.

By Ojasbi
Original : September 08, 2021

Lex Fridman is an AI researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Who is Lex Fridman?

Fridman is presently employed as an AI Researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research niche includes autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction, and machine learning.

Furthermore, he runs a podcast program through his Youtube channel named Lex Fridman. The podcast series entails conversations with popular figures carrying expertise in AI science.

Early Life and Education

Lex Fridman was born in Moscow, Russia. His family shifted to the USA after his high school. He then earned his BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Drexel University. He also received his doctorate in the field of Computer Science from the same Drexel University in 2014.

His father, Alexander Fridman, also has a Ph.D. from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Alexander is the Nyheim Chair Professor of the Drexel University and Director of CJ Nyheim Plasma Institute.

Career

Fridman worked for Google as a researcher from 2014 to 2015. His research at Google entailed findings on machine learning with a focus on active authentication. Thereafter, in 2015, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an AI Researcher, a position he has held to date. His research area at MIT includes human-centered AI, particularly in the context of self-driving cars, human-robot collaboration, and machine learning.

Fridman has a Google Scholar page that contains scientific publications in the domain of AI, deep learning, autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction, and reinforcement learning. His writings have been cited in 2253 other works.

Additionally, he has a profile on IEEE Xplore, a digital library that houses journals, articles, and other resources relating to computer science, electrical engineering, and other along-the-line topics. As of September 2021, Fridman has published 8 scholarly pieces in the fields of learning (artificial intelligence), driver information systems, mobile robots, road vehicles, automobiles, computer networks, computer vision, data analysis, distributed control, Femto cellular radio, image classification, edge detection, image segmentation, deep learning (artificial intelligence), control engineering computing, metadata, and many more.

Interaction with Tesla

As an enthusiast about autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence, Fridman interacted with Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, through a tweet posted by Tesla AI Lead Andrej Karpathy on 22 August 2021.

Karpathy's post was about semiconductor technology and included a proposal for more of its examples. Fridman replied to the tweet asserting, "If we consider language a technology, we've explored it deeply and still keep exploring with some help from AI." To this, Musk took the evolution of language and conveyed that there was scarcely any indication of English about 7,000 years ago, and that would be the same case 7000 years into the future.

Other such interactions include Fridman's Youtube review on Tesla Bot.

Tesla Bot

Following Elon Musk's announcement of plans for a humanoid Tesla Bot during Tesla's youtube live stream named AI Day, with a prototype expected in 2022, the business opened applications for employees to work on the Tesla Bot. On August 21, 2021, Fridman posted a YouTube video reviewing Tesla's AI day.

"As someone who loves robotics, the presentation of a humanoid Tesla Bot was truly exciting. Of course, for me personally, the lifelong dream has been to build the mind, the robot that becomes a friend and a companion to humans, not just a servant that performs boring and dangerous tasks. But, to me, these two problems should, and I think will be solved in parallel," he said in the video.

"The Tesla Bot, if successful, just might solve the latter problem of perception, movement, and object manipulation. And, I hope to play a small part in solving the former problem of human-robot interaction and, yes, friendship," he continued, referring to his desire to build a personal and professional connection with Tesla.

Podcast

Fridman facilitates a podcast program through his Youtube channel named Lex Fridman. The channel has more than a million followers as of September 2021. The podcast series entails conversations with AI, science, and technology experts, namely, Elon Musk, Eric Weinstein, Jack Dorsey, and Richard Dawkins.

Personal Life

As per his Instagram handle, which has 407 thousand followers as of September 2021, Fridman practices martial art and combat sport Jui Jutsu.

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