Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

WED

3:30PM ET

April 2, 2025

History of Science and Technology Q&A

April 9, 2025 Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A

FRI

3:30PM ET

This Week

Science and Technology Q&A for Kids (& Others)

Next Week Future of Science and Technology Q&A

UPCOMING: April 2, 2025 @ 2:00PM ET

Live CEOing 877: Language Design in Wolfram Language »

Science &
Technology Q&A for Kids & Others

Weekly ask-me-anything about science & technology

156 episodes

History of Science and Technology Q&A

Biweekly ask-me-anything about history of science & technology

88 episodes

Future of Science &
Technology Q&A

Biweekly ask-me-anything about the future of science & technology

36 episodes

Live
CEOing

Behind the scenes in real-life software design

876 episodes

Business, Innovation &
Managing Life Q&A

Biweekly ask-me-anything about business, innovation & managing life

84 episodes

Research Working Sessions

Behind the scenes of previous and current work in various areas of science and research

93 episodes

Personal Video
Worklogs

Raw recordings of work getting done

265 episodes

Public &
Special Events

Timely explorations, special events and public addresses

64 episodes

Podcasts

Selected recordings of Q&A and other events

464 episodes

Recent Livestreams

Future of Science & Technology Q&A:
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (March 14, 2025) »

1 hour 26 minutes

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What, exactly, is an "AI agent"? "Agentic"? It seems like nobody knows what those words actually mean today. Can you tell us about the future of media/information consumption? Will we become a society of "AI summaries" as our main form of information gathering? Before AI summaries, there were encyclopedias and textbooks and CliffsNotes and such, and while they were useful and convenient, they never became de facto. When will we get the first AI/robot news reporter? I see these being useful in cases of dangerous live broadcasting like hurricanes, to keep people up to date. How far are we from LLMs generating a Stephen Wolfram–style long-form post, with similar elucidations, based on a short prompt of the key insight or topic? When you say the teaching is delegated to the machine, are you saying that the machine is telling the student what to think about instead of just answering questions? Can a sentient AI "understand" how humans learn? If we would delegate to them the teaching of human kids, would that be compatible with a biological point of view? Have you ever considered entering the robotics space? A Wolfram Robotics, so to speak? But if people delegate all calculations to the machines, then might it not happen that the machine actually learns to ask better questions than the humans can, since the machines have the experience built from the calculations and the humans don't? What will AI not be able to do? Do you believe that something like that exists? Tiny humans care about those questions about clouds and trees. Robotic trade shows sound interesting. The company Boston Dynamics shows a lot of progress in the humanoid department. Anything to say about the future of pi? (Happy Pi Day!) ​​​​Do you expect LLM development to hit significant diminishing returns within the next 2–3 years? Automated theorem proving is so interesting. I'm trying to figure out how to make a theorem prover that demonstrably collapses a/the wavefunction. Like Stephen said; quantum LLMs. View Less »
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Live CEOing #876:
Live CEOing Ep 876: Language Design in Wolfram Language [Cyclic, Instrumentation and More] »

with Stephen Wolfram | 52 minutes

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Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business, Innovation and Managing Life (March 12, 2025) »

1 hour 27 minutes

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Is academia the only real career path if one just wants to learn and do research? What are the risks for using AI/LLMs to do my technical writing job so I can focus on prompt engineering for the future of my field? You've at the very least been told all sorts of interesting things that you can't currently repeat publicly. Would you ever consider writing a book or articles that would be locked for x years? How would you guarantee an AI doesn't break an NDA accidentally? Will "LLM psychologist" be a future career path? Are websites receiving fewer visits due to the rise of AI agent/assistant apps that provide advice on products or services? I, Robot by Asimov is a highly recommended, excellent collection of problems with the three laws. Any suggestions on how to get someone to review my papers? I'm an antisocial autodidact with no academic backing. It's been impossible to get anyone to even consider my work. If you make better rules, people will find better loopholes. What are your thoughts on how a business specifically can do high-quality science? Companies like big AI labs seem to be doing well in this respect. Are they a good model for other companies doing science in other fields? Historically, how much effort have great scientists with important contributions put into showing, or "marketing," their ideas? The best teachers are the ones that ask the right questions from the students. Not telling them what to think. How is a STEM background useful in entrepreneurship? View Less »
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Live CEOing #875:
Live CEOing Ep 875: Language Design in Wolfram Language [Fit Functions in Plots] »

with Stephen Wolfram | 55 minutes

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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:
Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 156] »

1 hour 22 minutes

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Can you talk about lambda calculus? Any thoughts on numerology? My current favorite approximation to a constant (e, in this case) is (1 + 9^-4^(7*6))^3^2^85, which uses each of the digits 1–9 only once and is accurate to 18 septillion digits. Atmospheric noise is about as random as we can get, I think. How does IBM Watson AI stand against modern LLMs? Would the LLM have the same reaction time to compete and press the buzzer as humans? Is it possible someday we may predict the weather years in advance? Well then, is weather a good random sequence? How do you calculate wind speed if wind is just a pressure difference? If the Earth started rotating in reverse, would that have an effect on weather? What would it take to stabilize the weather (like using wind farms in reverse or controlling ground albedo or atmosphere composition) so that we know it exactly? Can the Earth's tilt ever be affected? What kind of changes would this cause? There is a rather large difference between what the ideal climate would be and what changes will mean trouble for us, given our current infrastructure. Even the weather can't agree on what the weather should be. View Less »
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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (March 5, 2025) »

1 hour 26 minutes

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What is the history of game theory? What are some successful and less successful applications of this theory? Can you speak about John Nash's work? Did that have any influence on your automata work? ​​​​I wonder if that code by Nash exists anywhere? It would be interesting to read. Do you view the world as being governed by randomness or order? Would you ever write a book intended to explain the history of the ruliad/Physics Project? Have you studied the history of cognitive neurological abilities of scientists throughout the ages, things like long-term memory, imagination, creativity...? Do scientists invent tools first and then look for a problem to use them on, or do they find a problem first and then invent the tool to crack it? What is your favorite "age" of science? How did early mechanical computers like the Babbage Engine influence modern computing? Do you think Ada would have had more success in science and math today than she did when she was alive? Would you say you research more of the history of people or history of their projects/research? Which do you find more useful? View Less »
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Live CEOing #874:
Live CEOing Ep 874: Language Design in Wolfram Language [Engine Connectivity Engineering] »

with Stephen Wolfram | 1 hour 6 minutes

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Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business, Innovation and Managing Life (February 26, 2025) »

with Stephen Wolfram | 1 hour 1 minute

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Physicists that "could code" used to be the hot commodity; is it helpful now? Seems like CS/ML people are more in demand than physicists now—why? ​​​​I find that building simple frameworks in software GREATLY helps understanding of the underlying material. Mathematics especially, but I don't think it's limited to hard sciences. I kind of doubt my trying to self-teach cryptanalysis is going to be very transferrable. Would you consider "science communicator" a career? What skills would be most important? How would you think about approaching school in the age of AI and LLMS? Should I, as a university student, embrace AI and LLMs? Or should I avoid them to eliminate risks of being too dependent on technology? I did specialized things for the government and just got laid off. There are no similar jobs in the public sector. How can/should I pivot? Is it better to stay at one job and "move up the ladder" over decades like our parents did or adopt this trend of staying at a company for no more than three years before salary-shopping elsewhere? ​​Do you see any solution to the "iron law of oligarchy" on the scale of generations? Interesting point; so how do we break the mold? I'm northeast England, a deprived region—any advice to get my children (15F, 20F) to realize their potential? What about economic barriers to "success" and fields where someone can be successful needing expensive education? What would you say to someone who could change the world but who lacks any resources or academic backing, so nobody wants to help? View Less »
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Live CEOing #873:
Live CEOing Ep 873: Language Design in Wolfram Language [Development Priorities] »

with Stephen Wolfram | 54 minutes

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History of Science & Technology Q&A:
History of Science and Technology Q&A (February 19, 2025) »

1 hour 27 minutes

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Can you talk about the history of pi?"Pi day of the century." Is pi still being researched today? Or is it a solidified concept? Was there always a connection between "pi" and "pie"? Can pi be used for data compression? Is the only reason pi shows up more than tau because we USE pi more often? If we used tau, it would have been 24/tau^2 instead of 6/pi^2, right? ​How was your experience with slide rules? Did Leibniz or Newton use tools like a slide rule? My 8th-grade (1983-ish) teacher didn't allow calculators, but he let me use my slide rule. ​​Would you rather be stuck with just a slide rule or just an abacus? What is your favorite "artifact from the past" that you own... any interesting stories? What's your favorite artifact from the future? Many key ideas in computer science existed before we had the hardware to implement them (Turing's computer, neural networks in the 1940s). What ideas today do you think are ahead of their time in the same way? Technology has progressed at an incredible rate during the last two centuries. That seems quite unusual relative to other periods in history. Are we bound to enter a new era of stagnation or regression? Or can we just keep going? How would you think about cellular automata if you were born in, say, ancient Greece/Rome or Egypt? Or even the 1800s? ​​Is there a history of people discovering the concept of the ruliad and thinking about it from a different perspective (mathematical, scientific, religious or otherwise)? I would be interested in hearing about the bug of Alan Turing. It seems like our definitions of "science" and "technology" have evolved over the years. Are they historically the same thing? View Less »
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Future of Science & Technology Q&A:
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (February 14, 2025) »

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In the spirit of Valentine's Day, what is the future of bionic hearts? Would this be a way to make humans more efficient? How would you think about a world in which all of the work is done by robots and AI? Architects using computerized/AI tools will result in less demand for architects overall, thus less people getting to do architecture. Do you think the current methods of training and using AI/LLM are here to stay for a while, or is there a real possibility of an alternative machine learning approach appearing and being superior and more efficient? What would you think about spiking neural nets with a new non-differentiable learning algorithm? Is it the path to smarter AI? ​​​​I read from an expert that correcting the errors in a later prompt results in more errors. It's better to go back to the original prompt. Do you or your team actively work on the alignment issues with AI and are you worried about the next 10 years with regard to that? Do you see a danger in the trend toward anthropomorphic AI and providing AI systems with human-like attributes? I wonder what will happen when future AI models are trained on material that shows them the actual results of their past actions. What are some near- and medium-term breakthroughs that could potentially make the creator a trillionaire? Off the top of my head, fusion power, far more efficient batteries or novel propulsion systems. View Less »
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Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:
Business, Innovation and Managing Life (February 12, 2025) »

1 hour 20 minutes

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What are the qualifications to be considered an "expert" in a specific field of science? What do you think was the hardest problem that you've solved? Does fractional calculus have any meaningful application? Should I just abandon it after PhD? What are the implications of using hypergraphs in generative AI, or AGI? When will we get to adopt our own robot pets? I'm allergic and would love a dog. My Roomba is my pet. I'd love a guard robot dog. Did you watch the Superbowl on Sunday? Do you think we will reach a point in technology where computers themselves will have personalities...like you go to the store and that's one of the features to consider along with GPU, CPU, etc.? Have you ever thought about the intersection of math and sports? And how that can be applied? There's great nerdy data in sports! Do you think there's a danger of relying too much on technology? For example, automating home locks. There were AI companies in the 1980s? Do you play computer games? Or did you play console games in the 80s and 90s, like Mario and Tetris? I do think though, that playing games helps keep the brain sharp. With AR glasses, cats will never be able to walk in front of my terminal screen ever again! Why are we the only animals who can encapsulate ideas with words? Do you use any smart tech to categorize or organize your home library? View Less »
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