Who is Lex Fridman, the MIT researcher who hosted PM Modi on his podcast?

In one episode, he said, “If you talk to Hitler in 1941, do you empathise with him, or do you push back?… Because most journalists would push, because they’re trying to signal to a fellow journalist and to people back home that this, me, the journalist, is on the right side. But if you actually want to understand the person, you should empathise. If you want to be the kind of person that actually understands in the full arc of history, you need to empathise.”

He enjoys popularity among people who credit him for making complex topics accessible, even as his critics have questioned his choices and methods.

Who is Lex Fridman?

Fridman, 41, was born in present-day Tajikistan, but his family moved to the United States when he was 11. A 2023 profile of Fridman in Business Insider said his father Alexander was among the Soviet Union’s “most accomplished plasma physicists”. He later taught at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, where Lex earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees.

From 2014 to 2015, he worked as a Machine Learning researcher at Google. Machine Learning is how computers are taught to recognise patterns and learn from imbibing more information as humans do without being specifically programmed to do new tasks. It is a key branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – a field in which Fridman has expressed great interest.

He then became a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world’s premier universities for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) studies. Perhaps the most discussed aspect of his time there was his 2019 study on how drivers behaved while driving semi automatic Tesla cars.

It found that drivers pay attention to their surroundings even when driving such cars. “The findings were a shock to the industry, contradicting decades of research suggesting that humans generally become distracted when partially automated systems kick in,” the Business Insider report noted. Many researchers highlighted gaps such as the study’s small sample size and the fact that it was yet to be peer-reviewed – a crucial step in checking academic works’ validity. Lex also reportedly blocked the X accounts of some who questioned the study. However, it helped his rise, with Tesla owner Elon Musk taking notice.

What is the Lex Fridman podcast?

Fridman began his podcast in 2018, focusing on discussions around AI. Within a week of sharing his study, Musk invited him for a conversation. This led to a jump in his audience size within a short period. Since then, its scope has expanded to a broader range of topics and more than 400 episodes have been published to date. He continues to be associated with MIT but is more actively involved in his podcast.

Public opinion on Fridman’s work has included praise from others in STEM fields. Sertac Karaman, the director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) at MIT, where Fridman works, told Business Insider in a statement, “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.”

His work has also been credited for making expert voices in STEM and AI more accessible to the general public.

At the same time, Fridman’s “neutral” stance on political and ethical issues has generated criticism. He has sometimes platformed people who are usually not given significant airtime in mainstream media, including those whose views have been debunked for being misleading or false. For instance, Jordan Peterson has made controversial remarks on politics, gender and other hot-button issues.

Fridman says such invitations are made deliberately from a place of intellectual curiosity, but he does not aim to take any sides. He told The Boston Globe in 2024, “I have an insatiable curiosity for diverse, challenging, conflicting ideas and people: what people think and how they think.” He added, “The vision was and is to do long-form exploration of these ideas.”

He once expressed a desire to speak to internet personality Andrew Tate, who is known for sharing misogynistic views. Lex spoke about how many young men looked up to Tate. “There is an aspect to the way he talks about women that while I understand… but I think him being really disrespectful towards women is not how I see what it means to be a good man. So, the conversation I wanna have with him is about masculinity, and what it means to be masculine in the 21st century.” Tate was later charged with several crimes, including rape, by Romanian officials.

Fridman has also portrayed himself as an optimist on emerging technologies, while holding discussions with both AI proponents and critics. He told The Boston Globe that his goal with the podcast is to “play my small part in celebrating amazing achievements in technology, science, and engineering.” While “negative perspectives get views and clicks,” Fridman said, he aims “to help bring a more balanced perspective, exploring both the good and the bad, with empathy and with backbone.”