This is a clip from the opening lecture of the MIT Deep Learning lecture series.
Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VH1Lim8gL8
Website: https://deeplearning.mit.edu

Hello Lex, I'm wondering if you recall what was the initial spark or inspiration that drove you towards work in AI?

Was it when you were pretty young or was it in more recent years?

I wanted to, I thought of it as kind of engineering the human mind by sort of manipulating it.

I thought that's what I thought of psychiatry is by using words to sort of explore the depths of the mind and be able to adjust it.

But then I realized that psychiatry can't actually do that.

And modern psychiatry is more about sort of bioengineering, it's drugs.

And so, sort of, I thought that the way to really explore the engineering of the mind is the other side, is to build it.

And that's also when C++ really became the cool, hot thing.

So I learned to program at 12 and then never looked back.

Hundreds of thousands of lines later just I love program.

And that's to me is the best way to understand the mind is to build it.


Speaker 0: Hello Lex, I'm wondering if you recall what was the initial spark or inspiration that drove you towards work in AI? Was it when you were pretty young or was it in more recent years?

Speaker 1: So I wanted to become a psychiatrist. I wanted to, I thought of it as kind of engineering the human mind by sort of manipulating it. I thought that's what I thought of psychiatry is by using words to sort of explore the depths of the mind and be able to adjust it. But then I realized that psychiatry can't actually do that. And modern psychiatry is more about sort of bioengineering, it's drugs.

And so, sort of, I thought that the way to really explore the engineering of the mind is the other side, is to build it. And that's also when C++ really became the cool, hot thing. So I learned to program at 12 and then never looked back. Hundreds of thousands of lines later just I love program. I love building.

And that's to me is the best way to understand the mind is to build it. You

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Lex Fridman: Best Way to Understand the Mind is to Build It