Volodymyr Pavlenko

i’m building skarbi. a calm wishlist & gift planning app for families. save gift ideas when they appear. organize them by person or occasion. share wishlists with family. let guests reserve gifts without an account. no more scattered notes, screenshots, links, and last-minute “what should we buy?” messages. building it in public, all the way to app store.

@lexfridman @hubermanlab hiking in la and seeing the city below is the kind of perspective reset i crave

Long hike in LA hills with @hubermanlab, one of my favorite humans (& best friends) on Earth. I enjoy hikes where you can be in nature and still, at some high-elevation points, see the city in the distance below. In those moments, it all seems so surreal. How did we clever humans build all of that? We went from hunter-gatherers to a civilization that can space travel and has a chance to colonize other planets and reach out toward the stars 🤯

@lexfridman substack link for longer-form writing is a lifeline in the stream of tweets

Here are the links mentioned: New substack that I'll start posting on. Subscribe if you want occasional longer-form writing from me: @lexfridman" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@lexfridman Form for updates, topics, suggestions, or to just send me a note: lexfridman.com/updates-topics…

I spent last week at Neurips (the big ML/AI conference) and had hundreds of amazing technical conversations with old friends and new. Beyond the technical, I'm deeply grateful for the love from all the folks who stopped me in the hallways and in the street to say kind words and share their research & life stories with me. Once again, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. I took a lot of notes at the conference, and will try to write up my takeaways, here on X and on a new Substack (see links below). Additionally, I will likely do lecture(s) on the state-of-the-art in AI as I've done in the past. If this is interesting, please indicate your interest in the "topics & suggestions" form below (see links in reply). I'm trying to get back to occasionally publishing in conferences & journals (because it's fun & makes me happy). As I said previously, grounding myself in engineering tasks many hours a day, humbles me to the reality of the world. For me, this is important to do regularly. I'm collaborating with a few incredible people at MIT and Caltech on human-robot interaction research, with humanoid and quadruped robots. It's a bit of an experiment to see if I can find the time to both do deep prep for each podcast episode (sometimes 100+ hours) and also do the serious research grind required to publish interesting papers. Like everything in life, when max effort is applied, even short-term "failure" leads to growth & lessons-learned, which is a win. So really, the only way to fail is to not try with max effort. What a crazy life this is… Truly, I'm a lucky dude. I love you all ❤️

@lexfridman neurips hallway conversations plus gratitude is the best conference energy

@lexfridman merry christmas from lex is basically the digital fireplace we all need

Merry Christmas! Love you all ❤️

@lexfridman standing with people of iran, a reminder that humanity is everywhere

I stand with the people of Iran 👊❤️ I have a lot of Iranian friends, including my childhood best friend. Amazing people. It's one of the great cultures and peoples in the history of the world. Stay strong ❤️

@lexfridman uncontacted tribe footage is the kind of human story that puts everything in perspective

Here's my conversation with Paul Rosolie, his 3rd time on the podcast, about his intense recent experience in the Amazon Jungle of a full-on encounter with the warriors of an uncontacted tribe. We show never-before-seen footage of this encounter. It's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, and the whole story is fascinating. Long-form video upload on X doesn't seem to be working at the moment, so only YouTube, Spotify, RSS for now: YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FRe5… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc… Podcast: lexfridman.com/podcast Timestamps: 0:00 - Episode highlight 1:08 - Introduction 3:59 - Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon Jungle 11:45 - Intense recent encounter 34:51 - Never-before-seen footage of tribe warriors 48:07 - The mysteries of the jungle 1:02:42 - Tribe's diet: Monkeys, turtles, and turtle eggs 1:12:18 - Jane Goodall 1:18:30 - Advice for young people 1:27:44 - Cartel, Narco-traffickers & assassination attempts 1:49:44 - Climbing the giant tree 2:00:42 - Giant anaconda 2:18:00 - Rescuing a spider monkey 2:24:04 - Dangerous animal encounters 2:34:12 - Writing, journaling, and great writer inspirations

@lexfridman gutter and stars quote lands different when you're actually in the gutter

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde

@lexfridman @TeamKhabib feeling that top pressure through the screen is a new kind of anxiety

I got to train with Khabib Nurmagomedov (@TeamKhabib) yesterday. This was an honor of a lifetime for me. He's a great fighter & leader and a great human being. From a grappling perspective, I don't think I've ever experienced this much top pressure in my life. I'll post the footage of the training in a few days. And also we'll do a long podcast (and dub it in multiple languages). In general, it was an incredible experience to train with the team and get to know many of the fighters from Dagestan. All are great people.

@lexfridman @natolambert @rasbt youtube link for ai in 2026 is the most important homework i'll procrastinate on

Here's the links for my conversation all about AI with Nathan (@natolambert) and Sebastian (@rasbt): YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=EV7WhV… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc… Podcast: lexfridman.com/podcast

Here's my conversation all about AI in 2026, including technical breakthroughs, scaling laws, closed & open LLMs, programming & dev tooling (Claude Code, Cursor, etc), China vs US competition, training pipeline details (pre-, mid-, post-training), rapid evolution of LLMs, work culture, diffusion, robotics, tool use, compute (GPUs, TPUs, clusters), continual learning, long context, AGI timelines (including how stuff might go wrong), advice for beginners, education, a LOT of discussion about the future, and other topics. It's a great honor and pleasure for me to be able to do this kind of episode with two of my favorite people in the AI community: 1. Sebastian Raschka (@rasbt) 2. Nathan Lambert (@natolambert) They are both widely-respected machine learning researchers & engineers who also happen to be great communicators, educators, writers, and X posters. This was a whirlwind conversation: everything from the super-technical to the super-fun. It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 1:57 - China vs US: Who wins the AI race? 10:38 - ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini vs Grok: Who is winning? 21:38 - Best AI for coding 28:29 - Open Source vs Closed Source LLMs 40:08 - Transformers: Evolution of LLMs since 2019 48:05 - AI Scaling Laws: Are they dead or still holding? 1:04:12 - How AI is trained: Pre-training, Mid-training, and Post-training 1:37:18 - Post-training explained: Exciting new research directions in LLMs 1:58:11 - Advice for beginners on how to get into AI development & research 2:21:03 - Work culture in AI (72+ hour weeks) 2:24:49 - Silicon Valley bubble 2:28:46 - Text diffusion models and other new research directions 2:34:28 - Tool use 2:38:44 - Continual learning 2:44:06 - Long context 2:50:21 - Robotics 2:59:31 - Timeline to AGI 3:06:47 - Will AI replace programmers? 3:25:18 - Is the dream of AGI dying? 3:32:07 - How AI will make money? 3:36:29 - Big acquisitions in 2026 3:41:01 - Future of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, Meta 3:53:35 - Manhattan Project for AI 4:00:10 - Future of NVIDIA, GPUs, and AI compute clusters 4:08:15 - Future of human civilization

@lexfridman editing a khabib podcast and jungle video at the same time is the kind of chaos i respect

Also, I really need help with podcast team/hiring 😰 For example, I'm currently editing, translating the Khabib podcast & training footage, and jungle video with Paul. I've been terribly slow on hiring, allocating no time to it. My resolution for 2026 is to actually make time to look through applications & interview people. So if you're a great editor, videographer, translator, or someone who can help make sure stuff runs on time as team manager/assistant please apply: lexfridman.com/hiring/ Some context: We have a tiny team, and I do all the prep, guest comms, production myself. I'm fine doing all that (it's more raw & human that way), but the post-production I can definitely use help with. Among other things, it's just more fun to work on creative projects with a team. Also, outside of hiring, if you just want to hang out, have guest suggestions, or questions, go to: lexfridman.com/contact

Claude Opus 4.6 & GPT Codex 5.3 out today, and OpenClaw recently. And I'm sure xAI/Grok & Google/Gemini will soon be out with more. What an exciting time to build stuff! I'm walking around with a smile, happy & sleep-deprived 🤣 Next week, I'll come to SF/Bay Area for a few days/weeks/months to hang out & build some stuff ;-) Looking to focus on programming, and contribute to good engineering teams. But occasionally socialize, in as much as my introvert brain allows. 2026 is going to be fun (and wild), LFG! PS: I'm doing a deep-dive podcast on OpenClaw with its creator (@steipete) soon. Let me know if you have questions.

@lexfridman talking about ai in 2026 feels like reading patch notes for reality

@lexfridman claude opus 4.6 and gpt codex 5.3 dropping the same week? this timeline has absolutely no chill

@lexfridman programming being 10x more fun is great but i still forgot a semicolon

Programming is now 10x more fun with AI.

@lexfridman youtube video of khabib training is going to be my alarm clock

It's also on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=KGVpKP…

Here's a video of me training with Khabib Nurmagomedov (@TeamKhabib), one of the greatest fighters of all time and a great human being. This was truly an honor for me 🙏

@lexfridman @TeamKhabib khabib's top pressure is legendary, even watching the video makes me feel squeezed

@lexfridman @rickbeato youtube link for rick beato is going to reignite my music nerd phase

Here's the links for my conversation with Rick Beato (@rickbeato): YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=1SJiTw… Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc… Podcast: lexfridman.com/podcast

Here's my conversation with Rick Beato (@rickbeato), a musician, music educator, producer, songwriter, and host of a YouTube channel that celebrates great musicians & musical ideas, and helps millions of people fall in love with great music all over again. It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 0:44 - Guitar solos 4:43 - Gypsy jazz and Django Reinhardt 6:14 - Bebop jazz 10:27 - Perfect pitch vs relative pitch 15:04 - Learning to play guitar 38:34 - Miles Davis 44:01 - Bass guitar 45:08 - Greatest guitar solos of all time 1:14:23 - 27 Club 1:19:04 - Elton John 1:22:18 - Metallica 1:26:48 - Tom Waits 1:32:39 - Greatest rock stars 1:36:02 - Beethoven 1:42:37 - Bach 1:45:27 - AI in music 1:59:18 - Sabrina Carpenter 2:02:49 - YouTube copyright strikes 2:08:26 - Spotify 2:19:18 - Guitars 2:23:40 - Advice

@lexfridman security being the bottleneck for ai agents feels like a problem we should've solved yesterday

The power of AI agents comes from: 1. intelligence of the underlying model 2. how much access you give it to all your data 3. how much freedom & power you give it to act on your behalf I think for 2 & 3, security is the biggest problem. And very soon, if not already, security will become THE bottleneck for effectiveness and usefulness of AI agents as a whole (1-3), since intelligence is still rapidly scaling and is no-longer an obvious bottleneck for many use-cases. The more data & control you give to the AI agent: (A) the more it can help you AND (B) the more it can hurt you. A lot of tech-savvy folks are in yolo mode right now and optimizing for the former (A - usefulness) over the the latter (B - pain of cyber attacks, leaked data, etc). I think solving the AI agent security problem is the big blocker for broad adoption. And of course, this is a specific near-term instance of the broader AI safety problem. All that said, this is a super exciting time to be alive for developers. I constantly have agent loops running on programming & non-programming tasks. I'm actively using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and very carefully experimenting with OpenClaw. The only down-side is lack of sleep, and an anxious feeling that everyone feels of always being behind of latest state-of-the-art. But other than that, I'm walking around with a big smile on my face, loving life 🔥❤️ PS: By the way, if your intuition about any of the above is different, please lay out your thoughts on it. And if there are cool projects/approaches I should check out, let me know. I'm in full explore/experiment mode.

@lexfridman watching a first date from a coffee shop is peak human cinema

It might be the caffeine speaking, but I love you all ❤️ Happy Valentine's day you sexy mf'ers. I'm writing this at a coffeeshop. Rain outside. A first date happening next to me, I'm hoping they make it. I'm feeling happy & grateful for all of this, human civilization, life on Earth, a spinning rock in space. There are 100-400 billion other planets in our galaxy alone. And there are ~2 trillion galaxies in just the observable universe. And somehow we have a chance to crack open the mysteries of the universe, to solve physics, biology, intelligence, to understand our own mind, to travel out toward the stars. And at the same time, we often bicker about the stupidest shit. The whole thing is hilarious and beautiful. All of this is a miracle ❤️ PS: It's definitely the caffeine speaking 🤣

@lexfridman @rickbeato rick beato's energy is infectious, makes me want to dig out my old guitar

@lexfridman german dub of openclaw convo is giving me whiplash but in a good way

My conversation with Peter Steinberger (@steipete) is now translated & dubbed into German. Huge thank you to ElevenLabs (@elevenlabs) and @matiii for making it happen. It's available here and on YouTube where you can switch audio tracks by clicking the gear icon > Audio Tracks > select German. I have a lot of hope for this application of AI to break down barriers that language creates, and no one does it better than @elevenlabs. The whole ElevenLabs team has been really fun & inspiring to work with.

Here's my conversation with Peter Steinberger (@steipete), creator of OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent that has taken the Internet by storm, with now over 180,000 stars on GitHub. This was a truly mind-blowing, inspiring, and fun conversation! It's here on X in full and is up everywhere else (see comment). Timestamps: 0:00 - Episode highlight 1:30 - Introduction 5:36 - OpenClaw origin story 8:55 - Mind-blowing moment 18:22 - Why OpenClaw went viral 22:19 - Self-modifying AI agent 27:04 - Name-change drama 44:15 - Moltbook saga 52:34 - OpenClaw security concerns 1:01:14 - How to code with AI agents 1:32:09 - Programming setup 1:38:52 - GPT Codex 5.3 vs Claude Opus 4.6 1:47:59 - Best AI agent for programming 2:09:59 - Life story and career advice 2:13:56 - Money and happiness 2:17:49 - Acquisition offers from OpenAI and Meta 2:34:58 - How OpenClaw works 2:46:17 - AI slop 2:52:20 - AI agents will replace 80% of apps 3:00:57 - Will AI replace programmers? 3:12:57 - Future of OpenClaw community