Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A: Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (November 27, 2024) »

1 hour 9 minutes

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If your last name was something like Smith, would you still have named your company after your name or gone with something different? How does one decide that? Are there certain criteria to fit so there aren't a bunch of "Smith" companies? Actually, now that I think about it, it's strange we don't have a dozen "Einstein" incorporations. Reminds me of the old Dilbert series where the pointy-haired boss says "The name of the project is the most important thing!" before they even know what the product will be. So a name is like a joke: if you have to explain it, then it does not work? Little like "complex numbers." Just the name sounds scary to students. Can names be copyrighted? What role does AI play in brainstorming or generating company names? Will AIs start naming and running their own company? With a name like Wolfram, people will think physics. Wolfram is becoming synonymous with cutting-edge physics. Are there any specific naming conventions or patterns that tend to perform well in the tech industry? Have you tried asking an LLM for business advice? Do you think trends in naming, like all the "-ify" startups, will hurt a brand in the long run? What advice would you give to a computer scientist that wants to pursue synthetic biology? That's important to have a way to gauge biological evolution as a state of increasing complexity. How do you determine how innovative something is? What are the key criteria for assessing innovation? What's the best way to test a business idea before going all in? I have experienced trouble at university learning electrical engineering. I can now understand the intent to teach the intuition in EE is not translated to coherent actions by the teachers. What are the pitfalls experts should avoid in order to maximize the quality of their teaching? I've always wanted to sequence my genome! Its amazing we have made this possible! View Less »

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 »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (October 23, 2024) »

1 hour 12 minutes

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What are your top picks for "startup ideas for Mathematica users"? What's the future looking like for entrepreneurial business ventures and technology ones in particular, given what's happening with tools, capital, etc.? More solopreneurs? More big VC? Neither? In business, do you think it is better to try and start a business with a totally new idea that hasn't been done before or to reinvent an old idea your way? How do you advise young people with a similar all-consuming, intrinsic compulsion as yours, be it in their quest for knowledge/understanding or otherwise, and going about their careers/lives? If you're debating the efficiency of algorithm design with your team, how do you navigate conflicting feedback? Do you have an innately good memory or do you use memory tricks? Did you ever play an instrument? How do you develop speed reading and improve memory for a student or anyone who wishes to be better off intellectually? What financial advice would you offer to someone developing a new business idea with limited capital? When you run a business that provides a web service to international users, are you bound to comply with the laws of all countries from where the service is accessed? Learning to ask better questions seems to be arguably more relevant than ever before. How do you learn to ask better questions? View Less »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (October 9, 2024) »

1 hour 28 minutes

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Can you comment on the recent Nobel Prizes? Do you think you'll ever try to win a Nobel Prize? Are this year's Nobel Prize nominations a kind of interim step toward Nobel Prizes awarded to AI "entities" (rather than programs)? I'm not that fond of prizes, because there's many people out there that deserve it as much as they do. There's no need to waste too much time on it, since they probably already got the recognition. I mean, I'm more interested in understanding the contributions rather than the prizes themselves. Its like... OK. So what? They got a prize that somebody else wanted to give them... What software do you use for the graphs/illustrations in your books? I always find the illustrations in your posts, books, blog to be aesthetically pleasing, and I'd like to reproduce that. The combinations of colors are amazing. Did you take any special course on visual representation of concepts or something? What is your advice for attending technology conferences as a student? Do you have general advice for university students (in my case I am a CS student) that do not necessarily have the confidence to begin a big project? What has made you happy or is the best thing about running a business? 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? Have you ever been to Japan, Stephen? How did you come up with your new blog about time? Recently some friends' daughter was sharing enthusiastically what she was passionate about career-wise, and it crushed my soul that it was being taken over by AI already... what's one to say? I'm learning about AI models right now. And I've come to the point where I am adjusting hyperparameters a lot, which is driving me nuts. Do you have any advice on what to do with this? What gave you the confidence to work hard on your vision before you saw any external validation/success? What is your advice for the people who are "not good employees"? How do they get to do their own things in their own way, but still contribute value and "make a living"? View Less »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (September 11, 2024) »

1 hour

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Do you think the US will ever transition to the metric system? What tricks or methods do you use to stay focused on developing a core innovation, while not getting distracted by related features or future potentiality of the innovation (either as an individual or a team)? Do you have any thoughts why people always seem to underestimate the amount of time a specific project takes? Everyone knows a project always takes roughly double the amount but never plans around that knowledge. What country do you think is the best to live in? How would you compare the ideal of living in Europe, the ideal of drinking nice wine and good food with friends, to the ideal of working in the US and creating a business which solves some need? Do you think contemporary books are worse than the classics? Do you think contemporary films are worse than the old ones? What do you think about the art being made today in general? I'm in awe of your archive of information and would love to know about the mechanics of how you operate that and the tools you use. Would you be able to talk more in depth about how you add to this archive on a day-to-day basis, please, and your general setup? Speaking of your setup, how do you deal with "pen & paper," notably for preliminary thinking that may be visual/diagrammatic (i.e. free-form), and how does it fit your digital/"quantified" setup? How do you deal with "memorabilia," both physical and digital? I saw the kids on a iPad with a pencil doing math homework digitally and it works great to keep all the notes for homework! View Less »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (August 28, 2024) »

1 hour 9 minutes

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Do you only collect books that you find useful/actually read? Or do you have some books that are there purely for "looks"? On the current topic of books, to what extent have you transitioned to electronic books and reading, if at all, and how do you foresee physical books fitting your workflow and life going forward? You seem to enjoy what you do with your business very much. I'm curious what you enjoy to do for a good vacation with regard to managing life? Saw your driver's license on X! What's the biggest difference between UK and US driving? Which do you prefer? For me the best, I would like to have both the physical book and the audiobook version. The audiobook helps to have a bit passive osmosis-like way to absorb the content, and I can go to parts that I am still confused about in the physical book. But the ability to search what you hear in the audiobook should be an option. What is the key to a happy/content life in your opinion? What would be the best arrangement in an innovation setting that collaboration won't create a conflict about who would get what credit? Have you tried the Daylight computer yet? Did you ever raise money for your company? It seems you've maintained freedom far better than other entrepreneurs. Happy early birthday! Do you "feel" your age? You seem surprisingly active for retirement age. I can't see the point of retiring. If you do what you love, then why stop? I help people to retire. I would suggest that, if your job is stressful, retirement is strongly correlated with better health. I am a baker by trade. I wanted to do mathematics when I was a teen but dropped out. Stephen's programs were a huge inspiration for me back in the late 90s. I am now in my 40s and looking to go back into maths and engineering. What is your choice of birthday cake flavor? Brain vascularization/oxygenation (through exercise) is such an underappreciated competitive advantage in cognitively demanding fields. When I went to Switzerland, I indulged in the chocolate frequently! View Less »

Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A (78 videos)