Lex Fridman PodcastSebastian Thrun: Flying Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, and Education | Lex Fridman Podcast #59
Episode Details
EPISODE INFO
- Released
- December 21, 2019
- Duration
- 1h 18m
- Channel
- Lex Fridman Podcast
- Watch on YouTube
- ▶ Open ↗
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Sebastian Thrun is one of the greatest roboticists, computer scientists, and educators of our time. He led development of the autonomous vehicles at Stanford that won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and placed second in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. He then led the Google self-driving car program which launched the self-driving revolution. He taught the popular Stanford course on Artificial Intelligence in 2011 which was one of the first MOOCs. That experience led him to co-found Udacity, an online education platform. He is also the CEO of Kitty Hawk, a company working on building flying cars or more technically eVTOLS which stands for electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep59-sb See below for timestamps, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. *CONTACT LEX:* *Feedback* - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey *AMA* - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama *Hiring* - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring *Other* - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact *OUTLINE:* 0:00 - Introduction 3:24 - The Matrix 4:39 - Predicting the future 30+ years ago 6:14 - Machine learning and expert systems 9:18 - How to pick what ideas to work on 11:27 - DARPA Grand Challenges 17:33 - What does it take to be a good leader? 23:44 - Autonomous vehicles 38:42 - Waymo and Tesla Autopilot 42:11 - Self-Driving Car Nanodegree 47:29 - Machine learning 51:10 - AI in medical applications 54:06 - AI-related job loss and education 57:51 - Teaching soft skills 1:00:13 - Kitty Hawk and flying cars 1:08:22 - Love and AI 1:13:12 - Life *PODCAST LINKS:*
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SPEAKERS
Lex Fridman
hostSebastian Thrun
guest
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of Lex Fridman Podcast, featuring Lex Fridman and Sebastian Thrun, Sebastian Thrun: Flying Cars, Autonomous Vehicles, and Education | Lex Fridman Podcast #59 explores sebastian Thrun on AI, self‑driving cars, flying taxis, and education Sebastian Thrun discusses the evolution of artificial intelligence from rule-based systems to modern machine learning, emphasizing how data-driven methods now match or surpass human experts in domains like driving and medical diagnosis. He reflects on leading the DARPA Grand Challenge and Google’s self-driving car program, explaining both the technical hurdles and the importance of rigorous testing and leadership grounded in empathy. Thrun outlines his vision for electric VTOL ‘flying cars’ as a quiet, safe, autonomous layer of urban transportation that could eliminate traffic and radically speed up commutes. Finally, he talks about Udacity and his broader mission to make cutting-edge, job-relevant education and soft skills globally accessible as AI reshapes work.
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