Dwarkesh Patel (born August 19, 2000) is an Indian-born American writer and podcaster based in the United States. He hosts the long-form interview show Dwarkesh Podcast, which focuses on artificial intelligence, science, and history. The podcast has gained prominence in technology and intellectual circles, featuring extended conversations with scientists, technology leaders, historians, and economists.
Patel has been recognized for his influence in the field of artificial intelligence, being listed as one of the 100 most influential people in AI by Time in 2024. He is also the co-author, with Gavin Leech, of the 2025 book The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025, which draws from his podcast interviews.
Early Life and Education
Patel was born in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, and moved to the United States when he was 8 years old. His father, a physician, frequently traveled for work, and the family moved around the country, living in North Dakota, West Virginia, Maryland, and Texas. Patel studied computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, where he began interviewing writers and technologists in 2020 for an early version of his podcast, then called The Lunar Society. He took the podcast's name from the Lunar Society of Birmingham, an 18th-century British dinner club that was part of an influential intellectual movement known as the Midlands Enlightenment.
Career and Podcast
The Dwarkesh Podcast features extended conversations with scientists, technology leaders, historians, and economists. On the podcast, Patel has interviewed prominent and diverse figures, including AI researchers such as Andrej Karpathy and Ilya Sutskever, technology leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Satya Nadella, and political figures, including former British prime minister Tony Blair and former British political advisor Dominic Cummings. The podcast has received praise from journalists and technologists. The Economist said in 2025 that Patel "rose from nowhere to become Silicon Valley's favourite podcaster". The New Yorker referred to the significance of the podcast as "to the doomer crowd what 'The Joe Rogan Experience' is to jujitsu bros, or what 'The Ezra Klein Show' is to Park Slope liberals".
Patel is particularly interested in artificial intelligence, which he considers to be "the most multidisciplinary and intellectually stimulating topic." He identifies as "adjacent to the (LessWrong) rationalist community" which shares his concerns about an imminent Technological Singularity. His work often explores topics related to large language models, machine learning, and the broader implications of generative AI.
The Scaling Era Book
Patel is the co-author, with Gavin Leech, of the 2025 book The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI, 2019-2025. The book is mostly composed of parts of interviews from the Dwarkesh Podcast conducted with those involved in contemporary AI research, including Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, Mark Zuckerberg, and Leopold Aschenbrenner. Subjects explored include the training of AI models, including the cost of the data centers required to train larger models, the impact on business, scientific research, and AI's potential impact on geopolitics, exploring the ways AI can potentially be used by adversarial countries to attack others, with Aschenbrenner offering a hypothetical scenario of a country with a slight edge using small drones to destroy the nuclear submarines of its enemies. Some interviewed like Amodei and Aschenbrenner openly describe the inability of humans to comprehend the underpinnings and intentions of AI, particularly artificial superintelligence, with Amodei, while discussing AI alignment and AI interpretability, stating "We really have very little idea what we're talking about." Aschenbrenner further explains the uncertainty, stating that in the millions of lines of code, "you don't know if it's hacking, exfiltrating itself, or trying to go for the nukes."
Advocacy and Personal Life
In August 2025, Patel organized a fundraiser for charities opposing factory farming. Patel pledged to donate up to $250,000 in matching funds. He and his listeners (including Patrick Collison, Liv Boeree, and economics blogger Noah Smith) raised over $2 million. Like AI risk, animal welfare is a popular cause in the rationalist/effective altruist community.
As of 2024, Patel lives in San Francisco. He has stated that he obtained his U.S. green card shortly before reaching the maximum age allowed for child-status eligibility.
References
External links
Official website