1984

This book by George Orwell has been genuinely recommended 3 times on Lex Fridman. The people who vouched for it on air: Dan Kokotov, Dmitri Dolgov, Lex Fridman. It comes up in conversations about productivity & performance, relationships. The earliest recommendation we indexed is from Dec 2020 and the most recent from Jan 2023. Every quote below is verbatim, attributed, and linked to the exact second it was said. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

Winston Smith lives in a society where the government controls people every second of the day. He fights this world with love. But it's dangerous: love for another person can be punished by death - and Big Brother is always watching. Orwell's classic story shows that there is no freedom unless ideas and beliefs can be questioned. This is as true today as when it was written, more than fifty years ago. --back cover

• “1984 by George Orwell is one of the most impactful books ever written”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “one of the most impactful books ever written”
  Lex Fridman · Lex Fridman Podcast · Jan 202300:00:00

  Said during "1984 by George Orwell | Lex Fridman". The episode features Lex Fridman (solo): AI researcher and host of the Lex Fridman Podcast. This is a solo video in which he reads and reflects on a classic book rather than interviewing a guest. Lex Fridman summarizes George Orwell's 1984 and shares personal takeaways on love, hate, power, and resisting totalitarianism.

• “i mean 1984 is good of course as well like if you're talking about you know dystopian novels of the future”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “1984 is good of course as well”
  Dan Kokotov · Lex Fridman Podcast · Jan 202101:10:59

  Said during "Dan Kokotov: Speech Recognition with AI and Humans | Lex Fridman Podcast #151". The episode features Dan Kokotov: VP of Engineering at Rev.ai, the speech-to-text company behind Rev.com's human captioning/transcription and its ASR engine. A programmer-turned-manager who immigrated from Russia in 1991. Rev's VP of engineering explains how AI and human transcribers combine to build the world's best speech-to-text engine.

• “orwell's 1984 you asked what made an impression on me and books that people should read that one i think falls in the category of both”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “books that people should read that one... there's lessons there people should not ignore”
  Dmitri Dolgov · Lex Fridman Podcast · Dec 202002:13:56

  Said during "Dmitri Dolgov: Waymo and the Future of Self-Driving Cars | Lex Fridman Podcast #147". The episode features Dmitri Dolgov: CTO of Waymo, the autonomous driving company that began as Google's self-driving car project in 2009. He has worked on the project since the DARPA Urban Challenge era and helped lead it to the first at-scale public driverless ride-hailing deployment. Waymo CTO Dmitri Dolgov on building a truly driverless car, scaling beyond Phoenix, and why aggression isn't the same as good driving.