Lex Fridman shares his relationship with AI and Coding.

n a recent podcast with ThePrimeagen, Lex Fridman opened up about how AI-assisted coding has transformed his approach to programming.

For Lex, tools like Copilot and Cursor aren’t just about getting things done faster—though they certainly do that.

They’ve become a way to hone a new skill: editing AI-generated code. He explained that the more he refines what these tools produce, the better he gets at leveraging them, turning a once-solitary task into something collaborative and enjoyable.

Lex sees AI as a partner that excels at laying down the groundwork. It’s particularly handy for boilerplate code, he noted, but it’s not limited to the basics.

He’s found it capable of tackling novel or tricky design decisions too, offering a starting point that he can shape into something uniquely his own.

This process, he admitted, is just more fun.

“Even when I delete a lot of the code it’s more fun. It’s less lonely,” he shared, reflecting on how AI transforms the experience.

He compared it to pair programming with a tireless companion, a concept he’s never tried with another human but imagines might feel similar.

One of the standout benefits for Lex is how AI smooths over the friction of starting from scratch.

“That friction that you get when you’re like staring at an empty thing is not there—like empty function, empty class,” he explained, describing how that subtle dread of a blank page used to weigh on him.

With AI, that barrier vanishes. It’s there to throw out ideas, making the process more engaging and, in his words, “less lonely.” This shift has made coding not just productive but genuinely enjoyable.

Lex highlighted practical wins too, especially with tasks he’d normally dread. Take APIs, for instance.

He shared an example of working with the YouTube API, notorious for its murky documentation. Instead of slogging through Stack Overflow or trial-and-error, he can feed the docs into an AI tool and ask it to whip up functions for read and write operations.

It’s not perfect—he still has to review and tweak the results—but it’s a massive time-saver. For Lex, this is where AI shines: speeding up the mundane so he can focus on the creative.

But it’s not all smooth sailing, and Lex was candid about the learning curve. Using AI effectively, he said, requires a kind of empathy—understanding what the tool knows and where it might stumble.

“You have to kind of be empathic about what the AI is—what its limitations are,” he remarked, pointing out that developers often assume AI will fill in unspoken gaps. It doesn’t.

This has led him to dive into prompt engineering, crafting precise instructions to get the desired output.

He’s amassed a chaotic library of prompts and templates, a “mess” he suspects many developers share. For Lex, it’s a reminder that success with AI hinges on being deliberate and specific—spelling out exactly what’s needed.

Looking ahead, Lex is optimistic.

He believes the tools will only improve, with smarter systems requiring less hand-holding and better interfaces—like Cursor—making it easier to provide context. He even envisions AI asking follow-up questions to clarify vague requests, streamlining the process further.

For now, though, he sees mastering these tools as a must for developers. It’s not about being replaced, he argued—it’s about gaining a superpower.

“It’s been a big boost to productivity—like actual, how quickly you’re able to get a thing done,” he said, noting that the impact isn’t just in minutes or hours but days.

Lex’s experience underscores a broader point: AI can transform even the tasks he’d procrastinate on.

Those small, nagging scripts he’d push off? With AI, he gets them written, tested, and shipped, overcoming the inertia of that empty page. “Maybe it’s just because it’s less lonely,” he mused, tying it back to that sense of companionship.

The result is clear: he’s getting more done and loving it. For Lex Fridman, AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a way to rediscover the thrill of building something, a sentiment he hopes other developers will embrace too.