Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

WED

3:30PM ET

December 4, 2024

History of Science and Technology

December 11, 2024 Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A

FRI

3:30PM ET

December 6, 2024

Future of Science and Technology Q&A

December 13, 2024 Science and Technology Q&A for Kids (& Others)

UPCOMING: November 27, 2024 @ 2:00PM ET

Live CEOing 864: Language Design in Wolfram Language »

Science &
Technology Q&A for Kids & Others

Weekly ask-me-anything about science & technology

History of Science and Technology Q&A

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

Future of Science &
Technology Q&A

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

Live
CEOing

Behind the scenes in real-life software design

Business, Innovation &
Managing Life Q&A

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

Research Working Sessions

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

Personal Video
Worklogs

Raw recordings of work getting done

Public &
Special Events

Timely explorations, special events and public addresses

Podcasts

Selected recordings of Q&A and other events

Recent Livestreams

Future of Science & Technology Q&A:

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (November 22, 2024) »

1 hour 7 minutes

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Since you talked about the history of quantum mechanics, how about the future? Will AI tutors take over all education? Will traditional classrooms still exist 20 years from now, or will everything be online? Are there enough guardrails in place for a K-12 application of AI tutors? So many kids need real information to grow on, which can be provided by AI, but there still needs to be human encouragement to motivate! Do you think that medical ethics will change with the rapid advance of gene therapies? Yes, scientists have indeed created glow-in-the-dark rabbits. Could bacteria or viruses evolve to outsmart all our medical advancements? Will AI-driven biological evolution make Darwinian evolution obsolete ? How do we prevent the automatic synthesis of biological virus by AI? When (if at all) do you anticipate we'll have mostly "softwarized" humans themselves, meaning we can reprogram ourselves just as easily as we reprogram computer systems? Speaking of biological evolution, can this help us humans break the age limit, let's say over two centuries? View Less »

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History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (November 20, 2024) »

1 hour 33 minutes

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Can you tell us anything about the history of quantum mechanics? What's the craziest historical debate between physicists about quantum theory? Thoughts on extending Kirchhoff's blackbody experiments to astronomical bodies? Was the Copenhagen interpretation a mistake, in regard to how paradoxical results were "glossed over"? Can you tell us more about Schrödinger's cat? What is actually happening? Aren't zero-point fluctuations an absolute reference frame and therefore a fatal blow to relativity? Did Feynman's work on quantum electrodynamics completely change the game, or was it just building on others? What do you think about Wheeler's participatory universe idea? You got to meet all these neat people Mr. W! It's nice to hear your stories about meeting them. View Less »

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Live CEOing #863:

Live CEOing Ep 863: Language Design in Wolfram Language [EntityValue[..., "Date"] & More] »

with Stephen Wolfram | 47 minutes

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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 152] »

1 hour 22 minutes

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In class, we learned that light behaves like both a wave and a particle. How is that even possible? My teacher said there's no "up" or "down" in space. Why is that, and how do astronauts navigate? Is the universe as small as it is big? When will we reach the physical computer chip size limit? I heard in two, three years. I also heard that quantum computer chips are still far away. Is this true? Can you elaborate on it? How do you expect propagation of light in your model to work out? Will you get frequency-dependent propagation like in a normal elastic solid or independent propagation? If light has no mass, how can gravity, like from a black hole, pull it in? Doesn't that break the rules? View Less »

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Live CEOing #862:

Live CEOing Ep 862: Design Review of Word, Language, and PhoneticSymbol »

with Stephen Wolfram | 1 hour 13 minutes

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Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (November 13, 2024) »

1 hour 14 minutes

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How long should someone expect to wait before a new business becomes profitable? In your personal/professional journey, what are the important things that you learned the hard way? Can you elaborate on some of the unique talents within your team? Perhaps extremely smart or methodical/disciplined people? Can you tell us about any exciting projects you're working on right now? What do you think about self-driving? Do you think Tesla's approach without LIDAR has legs or do you think the Google Waymo hardware-intense approach is more promising? Any tips for building a strong customer base from scratch? What's the best way to figure out pricing for a new product or service? With your work on Wolfram|Alpha and other projects, you've brought complex computational abilities to the general public in accessible ways. What were some of the challenges in making such powerful tools user friendly, and how do you think accessibility to high-level technology will shape industries in the future? If the CEO himself heavily uses the product, you know it's something special. Stephen, how do you personally define innovation? What makes something truly innovative instead of just a small improvement? How important are critiques? Which do you find more valuable: positive or negative feedback? I like real feedback. Pick it apart—that helps in fixing problems/strengthen whatever it is. I've been rewatching the first hour of your interview with Yudkowsky since yesterday... do you enjoy those types of interactions often? How do you balance maintaining the integrity of your original idea while incorporating customer feedback, which is often influenced by their familiarity with previous, incomparable solutions? Do you have a favorite interview/podcast/speech that you've done? Or one that you were most proud of? Are you aware that with the weekly livestreams, you basically invented THE PERFECT brain workout? Is there a topic or question you wish more podcast hosts would ask you about that they often overlook? What is something surprising people may not know about your "day job"? You have frequently written about your vast digital archive. What tool do you use for indexing and searching? What other tools have you used or considered in the past and what is your opinion about them? With the improving LLMs and RAG, how do you think searching and indexing will change? View Less »

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Future of Science & Technology Q&A:

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (November 8, 2024) »

1 hour 4 minutes

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Do you think AI will ever actually "understand" things like humans do?Do you think we'll ever understand everything about the universe, or will there always be mysteries? If there are aliens, they probably have AI, right? Do you think that the aging process is something "programmed" the same way as the developmental process, or we just have wear and tear more like a car, or something else? I'm a big fan of the game Cyberpunk 2077, which revolves around the idea of futuristic technology and digital consciousness. Do you think humans being able to digitize their mind or soul would be beneficial to our progression?Recently, in my job, I've been processing semi-corrupt data from 50-year-old magnetic tape, and we're having to decide on the best way to handle the various types of corruption. What are your thoughts on the present and future of information/data storage and preservation given the sheer volume and the "humidity and mold" that threaten modern digital storage? If parts of the brain are removed in stages (rather than all at once) and the digital implants are properly synced with the remaining brain parts between each stage, wouldn't this solve the "is it me or not me" problem? Questions about preservation of things. I wonder how hungry you would be after waking up after being frozen for 500 years.Do we know if all human thinking works the same way? View Less »

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Live CEOing #861:

Live CEOing Ep 861: Language Design in Wolfram Language [Engine Connectivity Engineering] »

with Stephen Wolfram | 51 minutes

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History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (November 6, 2024) »

45 minutes

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Were there any ancient travel bloggers (or the ancient equivalent) who wrote about other places they visited? Did ancient civilizations like Rome or Egypt actually communicate with each other? How did they know about each other? How influential was Babylonian science on Greek natural philosophy? How did people know how to tell time before clocks? Did scientists back in the day have rivals or "frenemies" like we see in movies? Did ancient people have the equivalent of church bells to mark the time in cities? Were there any ancient or medieval "tech hacks" that we'd still find useful today? Why do you think the ancient Greeks had a fondness for abstract levels of thought? Is there an aspect of culture that enables this? How did people figure out that the Earth is round? View Less »

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Live CEOing #860:

Live CEOing Ep 860: Language Design in Wolfram Language [HoldCompleteForm, CurrentValue & More] »

with Stephen Wolfram | 1 hour

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Live CEOing #859:

Live CEOing Ep 859: Language Design in Wolfram Language [Tabular] »

with Stephen Wolfram | 1 hour 7 minutes

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Science & Technology Q&A for Kids & Others:

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [Episode 151] »

1 hour 20 minutes

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As a computer scientist and now physics student, I would love to ask you what makes you think that our universe is an automata, and how does it run if the medium is itself? Does the universe have a halting probability or the ruliad? Aren't we just describing our perception of the universe instead of the actual universe? What would Kant say about the ruliad? What is your view on atoms being able of cognition and self-awareness in the human brain by just assembling themselves? The ruliad contains its own encoding function and it is instantiated. The simpler the function, the better. Can we look at free will as probability distributions in the ruliad? What happens in the ruliad during overlap of two free wills? What "runs" the ruliad? Computers run computer programs. Mathematicians do thinking and write on paper to prove theories. In every case I can think of, for information to be "processed," there has to be some sort of processor intelligence doing the work. What is it the equivalent for the ruliad? If there isn't an intelligence running it, why does it follow rules? What if the observer is a computational system? Maybe each species of observer conflates all their threads into a different identity mapping of the ruliad. Each species' encoding function is a distinct identity mapping, speciation's blueprint. Perhaps we should replace school grades with "extent to which you have captured the ruliad." Could you explain what infinity is? View Less »

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