Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, and First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #70

[@lexfridman]

I really enjoyed this conversation with Jim. Here's the outline: 0:00 - Introduction 2:12 - Difference between a computer and a human brain 3:43 - Computer abstraction layers and parallelism 17:53 - If you run a program multiple times, do you always get the same answer? 20:43 - Building computers and teams of people 22:41 - Start from scratch every 5 years 30:05 - Moore's law is not dead 55:47 - Is superintelligence the next layer of abstraction? 1:00:02 - Is the universe a computer? 1:03:00 - Ray Kurzweil and exponential improvement in technology 1:04:33 - Elon Musk and Tesla Autopilot 1:20:51 - Lessons from working with Elon Musk 1:28:33 - Existential threats from AI 1:32:38 - Happiness and the meaning of life

[@maxlieberman578]

David Deutsch please! :)

[@byrnemeister2008]

Robert Diggins You sir have failed the Turing test!

[@byrnemeister2008]

Robert Diggins Try rebooting or maybe retrain your NLP model on a bigger and more relevant dataset. Your comments look almost random.

[@byrnemeister2008]

Robert Diggins Hilarious. I still think this account is a students software project. Hence the random selection of topics and the weak excuse of auto correct errors because your typing on a phone. Followed by a big ream of text. This could be a GPT2 response.

[@isuckatthisgame]

Lex, you are the real MVP. Ultimate professor. Thank you! Regards from Europe.

[@soumyarooproy]

Jim's super cool and also very respected in the industry. He was a big inspiration for me early on in my career. I was a fairly junior CPU performance engineer at AMD when Jim joined AMD in 2012 (he'd worked at AMD earlier in his career too). I worked on the Zen program, which was being led by Jim. I saw him at my gym one morning, deadlifting 275 lbs (or maybe more) and I went up to him and introduced myself. He was super friendly and continued to be so whenever I'd run into him. We'd exchange our personal bests in lifting. IIRC, he was in his mid 50's then. Given the similarity in our backgrounds (CPU design) and his professional achievements and his amazing discipline, it was a no-brainer for me to aspire to be like him.

[@stints]

I hope you continue to push yourself and do some great things like he has. You can do it.

[@xeightyx]

do you remember what his personal bests were?

[@sommyaruproy8405]

Wtf i have never met a person with same name as me.

[@mriegger]

He looks considerably stronger and healthier than most of Lex's other guests who are often a lot younger. All that gym time definitely paying off.

[@djmips]

He was at AMD from age 53 to 57.

[@olekkuvppl]

Oh my god Silicon Ronin himself. Silicon Ronin has no home. He goes from impossible task to next impossible task and builds his miracles. Jim is a man of focus, commitment, sheer will... something you know very little about. I once saw him design a FPGA in a bar... with a pencil, with a fucking pencil. Then suddenly one day he asked to leave. So I made a deal with him. I gave him an impossible task. A job no one could have pulled off. To make AMD competitive again and he succeeded . The architecture choices he made that day laid the foundation of what we are now.

[@dimomarkov8937]

[@HiberNAT]

and thats how i met your mother

[@bobsagget823]

get a life

[@d1oftwins]

@@JayDee-b5u Jim was not talking about AMD's Zen architecture.

[@d1oftwins]

@@JayDee-b5u I was merely informing you about that fact, there was not judgment on my side.

[@temprd]

Could watch this one on a loop indefinitely. So many good tidbits in here.

[@ShiroKage009]

One thing that's incredible is that Jim doesn't "err" or "umm" at all, or almost at all. It's crazy how present all the stuff he's taking about is in his mind.

[@VishalSingh-vq1fc]

1:23:10 That's how you know he's in top .1%

[@touchdownraiders2009]

ShiroiKage009 Great observation. I never thought about that until you said it. I was just telling my daughter to rid her vocabulary of umm’s and likes.

[@AnHebrewChild]

Damn. Great point.

[@dualface6104]

I'm glad you mention this. This is one of my major pet peeves in life about the current state of way too many people's speech patterns & I wish I knew where it comes from so I could destroy it. Had a few people at work that, in THE MOST polite way I knew how, made me finally interrupt them, so that they would speak *just one* coherrent sentence. If an individual would only think about what they wanna say before opening their mouth, they would say a lot less, & it'd undoubtedly be more impactful. 😵😎✌

[@glennquagmire9900]

@@dualface6104 if you really have a pet peeve about that, you're the one with issues. who really cares about something so insignificant..? a lot of geniuses had and do have issues with social/verbal aspects. theres a lot of things you do that i'm sure people have pet peeves about too.

[@hoolerboris]

New video is out. I've never heard of the guest. His field is microprocessors, which I've never thought of as something interesting. Turns out to be one of the wisest humans I've listened to and possibly the best hour and a half of listening experience I've had in my life. Jim is incredibly insightful about technology, science, and just the human condition in general. Thanks Lex for making stuff like this possible.

[@phillip_iv_planetking6354]

He's also Jordan Peterson's brother in law.

[@sherrythomas8149]

Your comment is so valuable. You're describing exactly what I think about the subject and now I will actually listen and give it a try.

[@nachonachoman]

I would argue that microprocessor architect requires more engineering excellence than rocket science. And Jim Keller has been one of the best for a long time. A treat to hear him unfiltered

[@deesmods6696]

Jim's work has changed so many peoples lives, including mine.

[@KabzieMusic]

This is a man at the cutting edge of his field.

[@Mrawesome2346]

@@robertidonotsharemyfullnam496 what do you mean by that?

[@Mrawesome2346]

@@robertidonotsharemyfullnam496 oh ok i agree it is close

[@greyalien826]

@@robertidonotsharemyfullnam496 that makes completely no sense. a 10 year old that sees this today won't surpass him in 5 years or less.. lol. Nor does that have nothing to do with the singularity.

[@greyalien826]

@@robertidonotsharemyfullnam496 Uh.. there's kids that been like that since forever? except they just used books instead. Also it's not hard for kids.. because their brains are more elastic at younger ages. they can absorb and keep information better. 5 languages as a kid isnt impressive. it's just memorization which as i said is even easier as a kid. Also math isn't either, its just a set of rules that you follow and compute. all because a 10 year old has access to the internet doesn't mean hes going to surpass him in 5 years. with intuition? that doesn't even make sense. Uh it will most likely be people from multiple generations. if its that generation that creates the AI machine it is simply just because the information and tech hasn't caught up yet to the previous gen. it has nothing to do with "surpassing" someone.

[@greyalien826]

​@@robertidonotsharemyfullnam496 This is dumb. People are not just "gaining more intelligence" intelligence has pretty much been the same since however long. But id assume if there is ANY change its just all the stimuli may be having a small effect on pattern recognition, etc. also possibly people eating healthier, that's all. uh, as i said, there is not much of an "intuition advantage" with regards to this.. its machines and programmed algorithms.. what are you even saying. also, your statement could have been said 5 years ago about another 10 year old. yea, and i still don't know why i have to tell you a 10 year old isnt goin to surpass him in 5 years.

[@jato72]

Best podcast I have heard in a while. A very refreshing guest!

[@micosair]

This is the guy behind the Ryzen series of processors which brought AMD back from the dead.

[@happynews6219]

true that

[@codykeane6107]

He's worked on the major series from basically all manufacturers. Did the Ryzen series for AMD and athlon, A4/A5 for Apple and x86(64) for Intel. Pretty nuts work load and knowledge this guy has.

[@Jaker788]

@@codykeane6107 The x86-64 was done at AMD and licenced to Intel. At the time Intel was going to drop x86 and go to a VLIW instruction set architecture, called Itanium.

[@hjembrentkent6181]

Yeah solo job

[@RobertoCardadeiro]

@@635574 a Very good ideia and knowledge. Great podcast this was.

[@hrishabhrajput9504]

Thanks Lex! I am a big fan of Jim Keller. I somewhere heard that the microprocessor industry is just this guy competing with himself. He is hired by different companies to beat the processor he had built previously at other company.

[@kahvac]

Looks like he is uniquely qualified to do so.

[@Jaker788]

Well wherever he works, it's not just him. Ryzen for example, he made the data fabric to get the MCM and then chiplet architecture to mesh together, infinity fabric. The rest of the Ryzen architecture was mostly built by other AMD engineers lead by Jim. I think it's fair to say he always adds something significant to everything he works on, but it's not just him.

[@wl4dymir]

​@@Jaker788 a bunch of the very best engineers seem to gravitate around him and each other too whenever he moves. Or so I heard.

[@Alistair]

@@Jaker788 you're taking the joke a bit overly literally there

[@djmips]

I think you can take it literally because he as much said that companies want to build a new architecture every 10 years but he wants to do it every 3-5 years. The only way to do that is to switch companies effectively.

[@psychotogether5114]

These Lexures are nothing short of amazing. Don’t change anything. Your voice is yours.

[@sethbracken]

Sam Stone nice coinage lol

[@andrewm6788]

I like how Jim isn't afraid to make Lex question his entire career

[@YinnonHaviv]

IMO, this is definitely one of the best interviews by Lex. I found Jim Keller to be a version of Elon Musk with improved communication skills and more grounded/effective approach to projects. Thank you Jim for the insights and Lex for facilitating the interview, it was truly fascinating.

[@effexon]

I still find it... unimaginable even with his communication skills to work with marketing... I dont know are they smart or not in tech, IT, but it sure is challenge.

[@nachonachoman]

​@@kevinc-nj5hnit's actually a valid comparison. They both set the architecture for their products. Architecture is a higher level of design. And Elon is really good at it. But IC architecture, IMHO, is probably the hardest product to do it on. Keller is a legend

[@deanfowles3707]

Oh shut up

[@samerm8657]

What an incredible cocktail of a personality! Humble and down to earth, while seamlessly savage and large as a star at the same time.

[@keybraker]

Jim is an absolute legend. Cool, thoughtful, smart and humble. I need more Keller in my life.

[@brandonb87]

i've listened to many of these while at work in headphones, but this one in particular happened to resonate with me in a special way... thanks for being awesome

[@rubenpinamonti7125]

I've watched this whole interview 3 times already; this man has me mesmerized. What truly wondrous intellect and wisdom.

[@RolanElizabeth]

Ikr,I think someone needs to take every 5 mins he talked about and do a 1 hour video explaining what he means practically and maybe he might be there to help too but you know, he's not a nobody he's a part of existence that's done something important so probably busy

[@SomeTechGuy666]

"I've read a couple books a week for 50 years." WOW. 1:24:00

[@fatpen9731]

Yeah, wow

[@kyleganse4978]

It shows what’s important to him!

[@GaminHasard]

Yeah just paused right there and rewinded it. Did I get that right? Books are lives condensed in 200 pages. Learning tool for the human collective.

[@SamuelHauptmannvanDam]

There is only 2 others, I know do the same. Bill Gates and Marc Andreessen.

[@jacobuserasmus]

I only started reading a few books a week a couple of years ago. I can just imagine what he must have learned.

[@piyh3962]

This is such an approachable talk on the most complex things humans manufacture. Thanks Lex.

[@spacekidastro]

This guy's really well spoken on things and he stands on what he says, great interview👌🏽

[@remixisthis]

Love the way he thinks and talks. No bs, straight to the point, and able to apply first principles and analogies immediately. Always locked in sharp thought. Makes the conversation better by challenging Lex with no ego

[@jgrutzik]

Hey Lex - Please ask each guest to provide a list of their top ten favorite books and add these lists to your show notes. Thanks for all you do.

[@woocashky]

Joe Grutzik -> ten is a bit excessive - I read a lot but can't come up with 5 on top of my head ;P (maybe just me tho...) - all 5 titles would be some paniced bs that happened to rattle in my head at the time. And ten...? Ferris got workaround for this: "what is the one book that you've gifted the most" ... Or something like that. Much more specific imo...

[@AnHebrewChild]

Joe G- I'm with the other commenter Lucas: I'd say 3 books would be good, 4-5 tops. But I do LIKE the idea.

[@greensleeves6005]

Bumppppppp

[@Felicidade101]

book nerds. Its in the execution you will find wisdom!

[@AnHebrewChild]

gekkeredon We've got to not merely hear good principles & practices but actually _execute_ on them. TRUE. Thing is, reading quality books is one of the best ways to acquire these principles. (As Keller explains in the vid). Hence, we book nerds' request for book recommendations. cheers

[@pauliedibbs9028]

Good call on the ads, Lex! You are absolutely right about maintaining the flow, and I can say for at least myself that it is appreciated.

[@nickamodio721]

What a fantastic conversation that was! It boggles my mind that people like Jim Keller exist; people who are able to absorb thousands of deeply abstract technical concepts and then as a team use that collective knowledge and intuition to create new, effectively magic objects such as microprocessors. It must take quite a special group of minds to accomplish that. I wish that I was smart enough to do something like that, but in the end I'm just glad we all get to come along for the ride and benefit from their brilliance. I can't wait to see what the next 20 years of exponential growth will do to society. I'm ready for a whole lot of change.

[@RolanElizabeth]

He mentioned something about reading a couple of books every week for 50 years and he's in a practical field that applies what you read,so maybe you can do something similar

[@garyswift9347]

Hi Lex, you're GREAT. I'd love to see you talk to some people about the BIG DATA problems with modern astronomy. This conversation with Jim Keller made me think alot about this topic. I wish you had asked him a few things about it. Thanks for doing what you do. Keep it going for all of us who love to learn.

[@brendank]

Would love to see you talk with Linus Torvalds

[@evolagenda]

That'd be fantastic

[@pwny4995]

This pls!!!

[@toffotin]

+1

[@buggy89]

Agree

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

*flips bird* not me.

[@mikexu9397]

I was shocked by the accuracy of the prediction of branching as well. I learned it when taking a computer architecture class that's required by my CS major. The explanation that I came up with is this: Intuitively when we think of a branch instruction, we think of it as an if-else structure in C. Then, the accuracy should be around 50%. Achieving 85% without doing anything fancy doesn't make any sense. However, the blind-spot is the loop structure. For example, when using a for loop in C, the complier translates the loop into a branch structure where if the condition is true, it branches back to the top of the loop; if it's not true, then it branches out of the loop. Imagining having a for loop that loops 50 times. Predicting that the branch will jump back to the loop will have an accuracy of 49/50 = 98%. Just imagine how many loops a normal program has. Having an 85% accuracy doesn't sound impossible now. Also, that's why I subjective believe that trying to prefect the prediction algorithm is the wrong way to go. The initial high accuracy is not merit. It's just a nice feature due to programs having many loops. There's no reason to think that we are able to prefect the prediction. Hope this helps.

[@anjankatta1864]

This is a helpful explanation thank you!

[@a.d.1882]

Beside loops, there are also all the error checks conditionals which are false most of the time. There are even compiler macros to advise the compiler in that case (so that it can put the condition body in a far away memory area, this way more of the real code to be executed get cached). Honestly there’s really nothing surprising in this at all of that for people doing low-level / OS / compiler / game programming for a living. Only people who are stuck in their high-level programming ivory towers finds such information “surprising”.

[@mikexu9397]

@@a.d.1882 Cool! Thanks!

[@BladeAurora]

@@a.d.1882 yeah idk how so many people get stuck in their ivory towers. do they just forget everything they learn in computer architecture class?

[@ethiesm1]

CRAZY🤯No Clue- Thank you

[@raneynickel7443]

"Physics itself has been a shitshow for thousands of years." Brilliant!

[@bry2k]

@@Spreadlove5683 He meant there's a lot of questions yet to be answered and a lot of disagreement about how to eventually get to those answers, if the answers even exist.

[@vimalsheoran8040]

@@bry2k Yep true.

[@GrimSleepy]

I would agree with hundreds, but the civilizations that seemed to have understanding of physics thousands of years ago seemed to take their knowledge and understanding with them when their empires collapsed.

[@8kigana]

@@GrimSleepy oh my Lord you are 100% correct, they took that and certain medicinal cures with them too. Maybe even a sense of spirituality as well. I think of the Mayans ability to track time with such precisions, the Egyptians building pyramids with remarkable engineering and precision. It's like there were aliens we don't know about that somehow got them by (or lived among them).

[@AE0N777]

@@8kigana The Gobleki Teppe is another anomaly. A 12 000 year old hunter gatherer society should not have been able to produce the biggest monolithic site in history. Even more incredibly, they did not live there. Instead they used the site for a religious pilgrimage.

[@0ne87]

I came for the technical discussion but I really enjoyed his views on the philosophical topics and others not directly related to the technical. I really hope to see more interviews of Jim on various topics he seems incredibly knowledgable. Great talk.

[@Jman2008xxl]

This is F'n Oustanding! I wish I could have watched/listened to this podcast 10 years ago! 👏👍

[@Ben_D.]

Thank you Lex for being brave enough to argue with your guest. Not just listen. It brings out more details and depth.

[@MrSushantsingh]

Jim taking Lex’s case every few minutes 🤣 Jim was trying to save a then sinking AMD when I was there back in 2012-13 time frame, thereafter life forced me towards Deep Learning😊

[@housecat93]

This is the one. THIS is the interview I was waiting for.

[@CharlesVanNoland]

As far as the recipe analogy is concerned, I've always thought about it like this: some people know a lot of recipes and are great at executing them while much fewer people know how to actually come up with recipes because they have an intimate grasp on and awareness of the problem space and all of its dimensionality.

[@lolurobese]

Yes, there’s absolutely recognition deserved for the recipe makers. But how about the expert craftsmen/chefs who trained for thousands of hours that execute the recipe at a much higher level than the average one? Both are equally impressive

[@davidlcaldwell]

Jim Keller is Absolutely Amazing, Profound, Insightful, A Rebel, Iconoclastic, A Deep Thinker, A Trickster. Hands down my favorite Lex Fridman webcast so far. Lex Fridman is an Old Soul in a young mans body. Fantastic Content. Well Worth Watching. Can’t wait for the Next One. Did that sound Hagiographic? Well, Trip the Light Fantastic!

[@danesovic7585]

1:06:13 Lex: "Everything you said is correct." Jim: "Yay"

[@PositiveGs]

Hmm. Lex🥴

[@mlv60]

one of the best and most stimulating lectures on CS I've ever watched.

[@PrinceCharming2218]

Jim Keller reminds me of an older Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley.

[@tyler_drdn]

Yeah, a brilliant jerk

[@lifeisnotvibestv5124]

From the thumbnail i thought it was him lol

[@WildeTheGreat]

Now I cannot unsee it 😅

[@RolanElizabeth]

Who's Gilfoyle

[@DaveWard-xc7vd]

1:29:40 "The rest of the population has been dealing with that since they were born". PRO FREAKING FOUND!

[@npgatech7]

I didn't understand that bit, can you explain?

[@DaveWard-xc7vd]

@@npgatech7 He was forcasting the future relationship between super intelligent machines and humans, while reflecting on the current relationship between the 98% of people with average or below average intelligence and that 2% of people with genius IQs. Cars were invented by geniuses to be driven by fools. So it is with most things. In the future all of mankind will be the fool.

[@MindlessSuccess]

Well most people don't deal with it because they ignore the facts and base their decisions on emotions. My observation is that the dumber the person, the less aware they are of the existence of people more intelligent than them. Perhaps, a super intelligent AI will be something that we will never even become aware of.

[@DaveWard-xc7vd]

@@MindlessSuccess I am blessed/cursed with an exceptionally high IQ and for the most part people dont seem to notice because I lean towards being introverted and I tend to observe more than judge. Then there have been situations where I stepped out of character to save the day and people I thought my friends have reacted badly. It was as though their whole perception of me had just been shattered. I dont pretend to be an idiot. I just dont try to solve every problem but they react as if lied to them Strange.

[@DaveWard-xc7vd]

@@MindlessSuccess I agree with you on AI. It is most likely among us and we have no idea. But I suspect.

[@hyperTorless]

It's kind of amazing how bad is Lex at interviewing. He doesn't really listen to his guest (as you can tell by the remarks he makes right after he's done explaining something), ask vague and uninteresting meme questions ("artists VS engineers", "meaning of it all", etc.) and even dare to correct his guest when the guy has 100x more experience in the industry than he does. "We can disagree on this" ? Well no, you don't disagree like that with a man like Jim Keller, right to his face. Your position should be "maybe this highly-accomplished guy knows more than I do". For the whole time, Keller was being very eloquent and ready to admit when he didn't know everything. Many of his analogies were extremely useful to me. Brilliant guy!

[@Magician3388]

I just watched this interview and comparing it to his recent stuff, Lex has really improved. In this one, he does a really poor job imo of listening to Jim and pushing back in an arrogant way. I was almost appalled at how he handled this one.

[@Sufficient_Yogurt993]

lol everything he does gives off pseudo intellectual

[@osirisgolad]

Hello Lex, I just listened to the JRE episode with you on it and then decided to come to your channel to just have a look, not necessarily expecting too much crossover between my interests and the subject matter of your channel. The first thing I see is Jim Keller, the person at the top of my list of people who I have been wanting to hear speak outside of their official capacity for at least a decade now. I can't wait to listen to this and discover who else you've had on your show.

[@valoriel4464]

JRE bump got me here too. Subscribed, then podcast binge ensued. Great content

[@MrBizaaro]

This guy has found inner peace. Awesome guest. Awesome podcast

[@patrickalegria7620]

I've been watching a lot of interviews that are just mind-blowing in the sphere of physics and philosophy with Lex's podcasts. But this episode is just on a league on its own.

[@christianpattison8238]

Soo looking forward to the drive to work so I can listen to this on your podcast awesome work

[@smartwolf9045]

Thank you very much for asking this really open question : "how do you build a computer from scratch". Thats why I came on this podcast with Jim Keller for, and you provided it in the first seconds of the video

[@seanfitzgerald4207]

1:23: "I imagine 99% of your thought process is protecting your self-conception, and 98% of that is wrong."

[@antoinepageau8336]

I actually laughed out loud when he said that. I could’ve watched five hours of Jim Keller interviews.

[@Arcticwhir]

1:23:10 correction*

[@johnboykin3128]

Ha. He described liberalism

[@johnalley8397]

@@antoinepageau8336 Agree. Outstanding mind.

[@Wardoon]

".....I don't know if I got the math right. It might be 99.9%."

[@abhinandannuli9835]

oh, mannnn!!! that was a crazily intense conversation. Forget about technology, the way these 2 look at life is so amazing. Kudos to you two @Lex Fridman and @Jim Keller

[@gnollio]

Great interview. The difference in perspective (academic vs engineer) makes the conversation fascinating.

[@Jacob-sb3su]

I just wanna say Lex, your podcast has inspired me. For far too long ive been somewhat in a dormant state. I wake up, I go to work, I watch netflix, and I go to sleep. Your podcast has changed that for me, its inspired me to learn amd think critically. Its inspired me to use my time to further my knowledge l, not stave off my boredome. I hope one day I get to meet you and thank you in person, and, maybe even get to work with you. Its been a pleasure getting an insight into your mind and your guests minds. Keep doing what youre doing, its awesome.

[@DonBrowningRacing]

Pure pleasure watching Lex finally bend to some of Jim's answers when Lex would suddenly realize Jim's answer was beyond Lex's preconceived answer. Beautiful.

[@ZaDowlan]

Yea. I feel like this while interview went above Lex's head

[@dkutagulla]

Jim Keller reminds me of my Computer Architecture prof Dr. Yale Patt. most of topics Jim covered in this video were taught to me by Dr Patt inn his undergrad computrer Arch class at UT Austin circa 2000. Thank you for this video. Thank You Dr Patt. Thank You Jim, Thank you Lex.

[@jordandaniel714]

This is like watching an adult teaching a 6 year old new things

[@bonky10]

This was seriously one of the most interesting interviews i've seen and it's not just his work but the way he thinks. I hope he's written a book. i can't explain how, but it's like he is thinking in a scale of infinite and acknowledges that humanity in a way is going in its own ever sorta S-curve. What a thinker.

[@anjishnu8643]

Lex brought up this interview during his interaction with Scott Aaronson. Came here to have a look and god was this otherworldly. What an incredible person.

[@RolanElizabeth]

Who's Scott Aaronson

[@ST-fk3jz]

I think this is the best episode you've made. Industry professionals are so grounded and so full of useful information

[@hisyamudin]

If Warner Bro reading this, please hire Jim Keller as the next iterations of The Matrix Engineer in The Matrix 4

[@DEtchells]

Just came across this episode today; wow, this is one of the most fascinating interviews yet. Most amazing to me: CPU internal execution paths are totally non-deterministic, but the end result still is 🤯.

[@pkr619]

that insight on given and found parallelism (and branch prediction) is mind-blowing

[@RolanElizabeth]

I can't comprehend that , utterly lost

[@137vuk]

Such an amazing person to talk to.. I hope you will have some more interviews with Jim. Thank you for this one.

[@GamingBlake2002]

Never knew about this guy.. great episode!

[@klaymoon1]

I haven't seen this much of wisdom at one go like this. My deep respect to you, Jim! Only thing I have to disagree is that your team will be much smarter and much bigger. Because soon most members of your team will be self-conscious AI's.

[@usergrade1841]

Keller's brain operates on a different level from typical people. I love that you challenged him and he humbled you as well, Lex. Great conversation - I would probably have understood more had I not abandoned programming for biology decades ago.

[@pillblue2156]

He is one of godfathers of computing but he is saying we don’t know how our brain works so it’s difficult to compare with cpus.. mind blowing. It’s not because he is humble. He and this kind of guys just focus on essence and have deep understanding.

[@litolito7314]

this is one of your most interesting interviews ever! AWESOME

[@AbhijithVK]

Thank you lex from all my heart, for the wonderful conersation you presented. For the great questions, and to get an insight into such minds like Jim, that really shock my very core. Thanks to the wonderful times we are living that you could do what you do. Thank you lex once again, for what you do.

[@gerardwalsh4724]

This was super Lex! I think we have a lot more to learn from an individual such as Jim. Please have him again!

[@RolanElizabeth]

I'm waiting for part 3

[@davemilke3110]

This subject is so important to me that I put off listening to this podcast until I knew I had uninterrupted time to enjoy it - I was not disappointed - so good, thanks.

[@oscwolf1]

This has been the best conversation that I have had the pleasure of listening to.

[@RolanElizabeth]

Yeah he's practical, he's simple yet knows a vast knowledge about computer which weirdly ties to other part of human life

[@PRASAD54321prasad]

It's super fun listening to him. I was wishing this particular conversation to be as long as it can get, while listening to him.

[@mradminus]

How did you manage to get Mr Keller on the show, one of my biggest heroes all time! Keep up the great work Fridman!!

[@blackcoffee.]

JBP likely.

[@DaedalusCreative]

How is it that I understand less than 5% of this conversation and still find it so beautiful?

[@davidwallace1594]

Lex, Jim Keller gave you a run for your money! One of your best interviews!

[@motivationforbreakfast]

Incredibly serious guy and direct! Very rare these days. ❤️

[@kylegushue]

Wow. This was a tremendous episode. My new favorite guest!!

It's one of my personal favorite talks. You did a great job on this one Lex. Since I admire your achievements so far, it was kind of refreshing to see Jim giving discussion a common ground, which meant reducing your bold and (IMO) admirable knowledge to a range between 1 and 0.1% of accuracy. Although he is a man of skepticism and disciplined, challenging thinking, somehow he's comments seem to point at something infinite. Extremely interesting person.

[@soareverix]

This is probably my favorite episode so far. Very well done. I especially loved his take on human satisfaction at 1:18:47: doing complex work fast and effectively makes the human brain happy. Really interesting thought, and something I'd love to learn more about :D

[@projunder]

A legit genius, ladies and gentlemen. What a time to be alive.

[@AlanW]

"let me ask Jim Keller: 'what is conciousness?'" - 🤣

[@dr.fistingstein1566]

Thank god we got this in before the great lockdowns of 2020. I was able to watch this over and over again and this time I think I finally finished it without pausing to rewind or think or look something up or any combination of those. 1 year almost to the day. Yaaaay. i understood a conversation!

[@RolanElizabeth]

What did you learn so far,you can do a 7 hour video explaining the things he talked about, would pay to see it

[@utubeubi]

As a software guy, I’m just stunned. Thank you Lex

[@SpenserFL]

Only just past halfway through and this is my favourite podcast ever - thank you Lex. So inspiring and hopeful.

[@marzx13]

Great Podcast, one of my favorite episodes. Love the analogy between chip architecture and team and corporate structures. So cool to have the opportunity to see Jim explain his work at this level.

[@mkjyt1]

I am glad i found Jim Keller!

[@TheShanoGamerPlays]

"If you constantly unpacked everything for deeper understanding you'd never get anything done, and if you don't unpack understanding when you need to you'll do the wrong thing." - Jim Keller This man is truly a treasure.

[@xvoidee]

You are very honest person because you clearly state that "now will be the ad for 2 minutes long"!

[@Gi-Home]

You keep hitting the ball out of the park, great interview! Great guest and as always great interaction between the host and the guest. Thank you.

[@SomeTechGuy666]

Jim Keller is a fascinating guy. He is the Dave Grohl of high tech.

[@MrBSmizzle]

Fascinating podcast. I took an enormous amount away from this and the 2nd one as well. Would love him to do another one!

[@Oblivic]

Lex you’re a treasure. And Jim thanks for one of the best talks I’ve heard on this channel so far.

[@shoppster300]

I found this podcast extremely interesting in every way other than that relating to microprocessors.

[@polishfish]

One of the best conversations I’ve seen you have. I loved how he pushed back when you try to romanticize things, and I love how he (not meanly) dismantled some of your beliefs about your own research. Amazing guest, thank you for uploading it! (to be clear, I think your tendency to think Deep Tragic Russian Thoughts is not a flaw, merely a personality difference between you and your guest. There are possibly certain truths which may appear to him but not to you and vice versa) ((One of the reasons I watch as many of your interviews is specifically because of your pathos, so don’t change too much!))

[@edh615]

Fantastic interview, can't get enough of him, any blogs\books\interviews with similar content? It's difficult to find such valuable compressed information on these topics.

[@caractacustube]

Gems. Thank you Jim Keller, and Lex for making this happen.

[@cuulcars]

That exchange about search was beautiful

[@tiberiumihairezus417]

A great review of Electronic Calculators university course, and beyond. Great, great video. Thank you so much for the content you are providing us.

[@colinhay1666]

What an insane resume this man has

[@Arcticwhir]

It seemed like Lex at times was prideful which was clashing with Jim's responses and opinions. Maybe im misrepresenting it. I also think it was very eye opening to find out that moor's law is much more complex than people realize, its about 1000's of innovations every year, not simply the shrinkage of transistors (altough that requires 1000's innovations) It was also interesting to hear that they re-write almost everything every 3-5 years.

[@marcusklaas4088]

You're definitely not the only one seeing prideful behavior in Lex. I think he should just have explored Jim's (amazing!) insights instead of trying to challenge them and falling on his face.

[@nofurtherwest3474]

@@marcusklaas4088 agreed. He's the interviewer. He should have guided the convo but not made it about what he thinks.

[@TheAIEpiphany]

Because Jim was being overly confident at times thinking he understands every part of autonomous driving problematic while Lex is actually working in that specific area.

[@ChrisBBozeman]

Maybe Lex is looking at it in the wrong way. Like Jim said, if you're looking at it from a narrative view, it becomes a very complex problem. If you as a human see a child in the road, a dozen thoughts run through your head... "I have to slow down / stop." "If I hit that kid, I could go to jail forever." "I don't want to hurt a little child." , etc. Maybe its better to design a system that just says, "Obstruction ahead," and doesn't care what the obstruction is, just that its avoided.

[@jagjitsingh6334]

People are paying attention to Lex as if he is someone worth remotely paying attention. Dude is larping as an AI researcher and tries to play an antagonist to quite literally a pioneer in the field of Computer Science just for... looking worth something? When you take an insecure, weird, untalented guy and make people worship him for his mental aptitude and physical toughness, you give birth to delusional (un)intellectuals like Lex.

[@pwells2389]

Lex, this session was one of the most fun I've watched. You're body language and expression at 1:28:18 pretty much sums it all up. Just wonderful. Thank you.

[@boggers]

This may be the best interview I have ever seen.