Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram R...
Business, Innovation and Managing Life (January 29, 2025)
Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Questions include: How do we know how far stars, galaxies, etc. are in space? - Can you tell about the science of gem cutting, brilliance, internal refraction, etc.? - Does that mean that objects with higher refractive indexes heat up more? - Are there any materials that slow light down enough so that we can actually see it traveling without technology helping out? - How would you describe science? And how are you staying a scientist? - Can you talk about scientific paradigms? - Interesting parallel to current research in LLMs that have so many variables and so much variability that reproducibility is extremely hard—even if it is "just" computers. - Do you think science has a problem with trying to tell nature how to behave rather than reporting on what nature is telling us? - What if you start the prompt with a script for the tech demo and ask the LLM to not go off script? - I've often been amazed at how LLMs sometimes reproduce realistic human behavior. We have seen them sometimes "lie" or try to "cover" a mistake. - What's your intuition now for what makes the best prompter? - Do you have any suggestions on coming up with ways to test hypotheses, especially ones that are more theoretical and difficult to test in the real world? How do you know when you have a good test? - How are diamonds made? - How can fermions adopt a condensate configuration, or can they?
Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Questions include: How do we know how far stars, galaxies, etc. are in space? - Can you tell about the science of gem cutting, brilliance, internal refraction, etc.? - Does that mean that objects with higher refractive indexes heat up more? - Are there any materials that slow light down enough so that we can actually see it traveling without technology helping out? - How would you describe science? And how are you staying a scientist? - Can you talk about scientific paradigms? - Interesting parallel to current research in LLMs that have so many variables and so much variability that reproducibility is extremely hard—even if it is "just" computers. - Do you think science has a problem with trying to tell nature how to behave rather than reporting on what nature is telling us? - What if you start the prompt with a script for the tech demo and ask the LLM to not go off script? - I've often been amazed at how LLMs sometimes reproduce realistic human behavior. We have seen them sometimes "lie" or try to "cover" a mistake. - What's your intuition now for what makes the best prompter? - Do you have any suggestions on coming up with ways to test hypotheses, especially ones that are more theoretical and difficult to test in the real world? How do you know when you have a good test? - How are diamonds made? - How can fermions adopt a condensate configuration, or can they?
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1:29:04
History of Science & Technology Q&A (January 22, 2025)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Questions include: How would Stephen Wolfram think about "the new world"? Would you have been surprised by the "discovery" of North and South America, or is that something that would have been supported by science? - How would you think about "Are we alone in the universe?" How has this been addressed in history? - How would you think about speculating on the history of hitchhiking, going back to ancient Rome or even the earliest cities? I would assume it would be things like ox-drawn carts, not expensive horses. - What do you know about colors and how we represent them in computing? - What do you think about the Library of Babel? Do you think that all that could ever have been written has already been written in that library and we just have to find it? - Can you tell us about the history of your father? - How far back can you trace your family history? - Have you ever done one of those DNA tests to map your genetic history? - Can you tell us about the history of your mother? - Did your parents encourage your interest in physics? Or were they hoping you would pursue a different field? - My experience with people in elite philosophy programs is that they're often terrifyingly sharp. Was that your experience as well? - Isn't the word for tungsten in German, Wolfram? - Wow, he grew up splitting time between England and Germany during the prewar years. Did he ever write about his perspective on the war?
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1:23:39
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (January 17, 2025)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa
Questions include: How would you think about approaching science in the future? Should we accept AI's role in future science or still pursue science without the help of AI? - What do you think the future of software development will be in the next decade or so? I hear very conflicting POVs from friends. - Thoughts on LLM use in academic writing (including student theses and dissertations)? - How many new languages do we see a year these days? It wasn't long ago when I was hearing about new languages every now and then... - I'm using an LLM to help me through a book on thermodynamics right now. Nice to just throw misunderstandings at it. - LLMs can learn languages in a few hours. How would you think about making humans able to learn as fast? - Hypothetically speaking, if an AI system has access to all the images, cameras of the world, can it think through images, videos as if there is no language? Can it surpass human intelligence like that? - Interestingly, current AI models are very good at creating natural images of people, but it totally fails for electronic circuits. - How would you think about copyright, trademarks and other intellectual properties in the age of AI? - How do we know this is actually Stephen Wolfram? It could just be another Oracle trained in long answers.
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1:18:27
Business, Innovation and Managing Life (January 15, 2025)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa
Questions include: How would you think about approaching a business from a science and research background vs. an entrepreneur? - Do you ever analyze your organization and its projects from the perspective of its "bottleneck(s)" and tackling those deliberately? - Do you ever delay some of the important decisions? - How do you manage to context switch between all these meetings and focused deep work sessions? - How do you best learn science, from your experience? Do you learn and internalize the structure (reach a big picture view) right away or do you focus on just gleaning "local facts" and doing problems? - If you could decide how to invest $10B for science and technology development, what would you do? Build a bigger particle accelerator, a bigger space telescope, an artificial superintelligence, etc.? - "What am I actually good at? It's kind of this start from something complicated, drill down, find the fundamentals and then do the engineering to kind of build it back up again." Can you share with us examples of this, what topic you explored and what were the steps? Knowing how Stephen operates would be a really great lesson for all. - What do you think about literature? About fiction books. What are some of your favorite books? What are some you would recommend? Do you think it is important to read fiction? - What do you think is easier, running a business or pursuing active science research? - What do you say about David Deutsch's "The Mathematicians' Misconception"? I would really like to know your thoughts. - Are there any interesting things about Version 14.2 you can share? - How would you approach teaching math? - Which do you like better: creative meetings or more technical language design? Extra question: What livestream series is your favorite? - Audiobooks allowed me to read every book I've ever wanted, multiple times, including lots of fiction. - Music is great for one's mind... including whistling and singing. - Are you more of a watch the movie adaption vs. read the book sort of person? - Would you be willing to talk a little about Jonathan Gorard and his work? - How would you think about creating a fact-checking apparatus for the future of information media? - I'd love to see another live collaboration with Jonathan. I understood almost nothing from the last one but it was amazing. - What do you think about AI's role in mathematical proofs in 2025?
Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language; the author of A New Kind of Science; and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Over the course of nearly four decades, he has been a pioneer in the development and application of computational thinking—and has been responsible for many discoveries, inventions and innovations in science, technology and business.
On his podcast, Stephen discusses topics ranging from the history of science to the future of civilization and ethics of AI.
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