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

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (December 7, 2022) »

1 hour 27 minutes

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Is it worth moving to the USA from the UK/Europe to pursue a career in science, mathematics or engineering? What if one wants to change the world? How long should one wait after college to start some startup in an area of their interest/expertise? When you are thinking deeply about a problem, do you think "on paper" or on a computer or a tablet or...? Do you find one of them to be better than the others? Can you tell a couple "stamp-licking" stories from the early days of starting Mathematica/Wolfram Research? What are your thoughts on crypto and blockchain from a business perspective in general? What do you think have been some of the most interesting and hard questions you've been asked here and elsewhere? Can ChatGPT increase productivity? Is outsourcing writing skills beneficial or damaging? "AI did my homework" is the inverse of "the dog ate my homework"—you don't want to be in either situation! Visual AI can produce amazing inspirations for jewelry and that sort of intricate art. Do you drink caffeine sources like tea or coffee? How many per day? What practices do you use to gauge and cultivate meaningful accountability as an individual and as part of a collective? What was your revenue plan and time-to-revenue when starting your company? We know that you use a hierarchical knowledge organization (files in folders), but did you ever try to use a networked knowledge organization (e.g. Logseq, Roam Research, Mem.ai, etc.)? Thoughts on the best way to organize knowledge? Wolfram documentation is amazing because it's connected (related functions). I think the knowledge graph thesis is to give people epistemological tools and make it visual. But epistemology isn't something people worry about all the time while writing daily notes. Have you "driven" a Tesla in Full Self-Driving mode? It's out now for beta testing and it's magical. It's so, so good. Purely a vision + neural net implementation. Do you enjoy collecting and organizing physical books? Libraries are endless fun! View Less »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (November 23, 2022) »

1 hour 23 minutes

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As a British native, do you participate in Thanksgiving festivities? Do you ever use spreadsheets or any other type of specialist app to manage information? Or is your main tool Mathematica? Do you go through periods of low motivation? If so, what do you do to get over that? Should I travel? Pi Day at SXSW was pretty special! I've been to one of your talks. The first time was around 1990 at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Wolfram is the reason why I purchased a NeXTSTEP computer—because it included a copy of Mathematica. I think a lot of people are deep in mainstream university discourse and it is good to have talks to open up and stimulate curious people to break out of the stream if they want. Well, "they" say nothing beats person-to-person contact, as opposed to video conferencing. Then again, maybe "they" just like to travel to exotic places (disclaimer: I hate travel)! If you have to think about it (doing more in-person talks/traveling)... the answer is no. Unless you absolutely love it, there is no value in it. How about meeting people that don't go to universities but are really engaged in and doing hobby projects in computer and mathy stuff? Have you ever been to Idaho? Doesn't have to be a big and public place. Just talking back and forth, having a conversation. Big talks are not needed. What's the goal? To interact and make friends or lay the seeds of the Wolfram universe? Have you thought about making a video streaming and conferencing platform that integrates with your notebooks and computational language? Or do Google and Zoom do that well enough? You could periodically host "Wolfcon." Only folks interested would be likely to show up. As far as virtual interaction, I like Q&A streams, but also CA and physics streams. If I were you, I would make appearances conditional with a personal request based on your curiosity. Example: "I'll come to Paris, and in return I want you to pre-arrange a three-hour private tour with a senior curator at the Louvre for me and my wife." Wouldn't a conference on the Physics Project, in collaboration with a major university, help further disseminate it within the academic community? You should do a talk with Gerard 't Hooft. How come you were not on the Apple keynote when the Intel-based Macs were announced during the Mathematica demo? View Less »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (November 9, 2022) »

1 hour 21 minutes

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How do you prepare for your keynote talks about new technologies and Wolfram Language features? What barriers currently still exist that keep AR/VR from being widely useful in the workplace? One thing I genuinely appreciate about Stephen is his obvious incredible delight when explaining concepts, particularly related to science. Does he ever have to force it? Do you take part in clinical trials? Diagnosing is definitely a potential job for AI. Can Wolfram Language screen for diseases or illnesses? Is it possible to change human DNA by intention, I mean by eating foods or taking medicine? Do you try to convince your children to go to specific universities/schools, or do they decide by themselves without any impact from you? Multiple screens are nice, but I feel it's less productive sometimes. Sort of the same thing as multitasking being a myth. I feel like I am someone who has a lot of interests. I did my engineering degree a decade ago but I want to study mathematics, physics, philosophy and neuroscience too. Have you also been someone with diverse interests? If so, how do you manage them? I feel like I struggle with wanting to learn so much more—I feel like it's a lot better to be focused and simple-minded. Any tips for fixing a chaotic filesystem? My files are scattered everywhere. What do you do when you feel like you're stuck in the mud and can't get out? How do you write? How much do you use the mouse while writing in a notebook? Do you have any preferences in reading hard copy vs. digital? You should have an automatic email word cloud generator. Does UV hurt the paper? Physical books are heavy and bulky, while ebooks are never bigger than your favorite tablet! What is the oldest book you own? Do you think storage devices like tapes and punch cards might come back sometime? View Less »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (October 26, 2022) »

1 hour 17 minutes

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Do you have any fun Halloween plans? Any memorable costumes you've dressed up in or have seen? If you could spend the day as any animal in the world, what would it be? What might the change in perspective allow you to understand and apply toward your current work? What are your thoughts on providing feedback to employees? What methodologies and tools do you use? How can we best help an employee to grow before letting them go for underperformance? I just finished reading Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About by Donald Knuth. He briefly mentions the possibility of the universe being a cellular automaton. Have you ever read this book? Maybe "project" is not an adequate word for undertakings like Wolfram|Alpha. Do you have a timeframe for the Physics Project, or is it a lifelong project? If you had to work on another idea/project, what would that be? How would you tackle a problem? Dive into it or first observe the bigger picture? What's your way of studying something new? Understanding the historical evolution of concepts or reading from textbooks and working out examples? I have to wonder how Bertrand Russell would have viewed the Wolfram Metamathematics Project! What has been the typical response when reaching out to "academics" to join the Physics Project? View Less »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (October 12, 2022) »

1 hour 25 minutes

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How much time do you spend on building Wolfram Language vs. doing research on the Physics Project? And what are the pros and cons of doing both things? When working on something new, how do you know if you're making progress? Have you had stretches of time when you were exploring something, but it turned out that you weren't making much progress? How do you choose whether to throw a project in the trash or not? Sometimes you invest so much of yourself in something that it feels just impossible to do so. What tools, practices and/or policies can be implemented to mitigate the effects of reduced attention span and memory from social media use (and short-form content in general)? When you code, do you apply a test-driven design approach, or do you enjoy a more exploratory approach? What's "a day in the life of Stephen Wolfram" look like these days? With so much email, how do you bucket your email? Have you been running it through a rules engine of your own design? Why do so many companies prove such easy targets for hackers? Is robust security really so hard? Any future interviews of any public physicists, mathematicians, etc. coming soon? Do you take notes of things you learn? What's the system that you use for managing new information (when researching or learning new things)? What is your opinion on solo work vs. group work and how it impacts the legacy of a product that has tangible and intangible business products? How do you identify great developers? Do you test developers, be that with code or psychometrics, as part of the hiring process, or do you prefer to rely on conversation? Any philosophy book or article you recommend reading? View Less »

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (September 28, 2022) »

1 hour 29 minutes

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Have you ever owned a pet? Is there any animal you've ever wanted as a pet, even if it wasn't a typical one, like a Komodo dragon? Fall weather is here! Is there a season or time of year where you are more/less productive as an effect of the weather? I went swimming today—about 100x better than walking. I've only come across one joke in the Wolfram Language documentation, but I did find it quite funny and in good taste. Based on context, I think Jonathan Gorard wrote it. What do you make of this? What is your history with/view on science fiction (books, movies, etc.)? How important it is to save money vs. to spend it? How do you understand on what things it is worth spending money? Well, I quit smoking, so I'm using that money on the lottery instead. When is a technology mature enough to be "trusted" (i.e. autonomous driving)? What are your views on making very powerful and trained open-source AI models like Stable Diffusion illegal vs. allowing them to exist? "OpenAI" or open-source AI? How do you feel about making your email address public as a famous person? How did you originally generate funding to start your company? How do you choose whether to throw a project in the trash or not? Sometimes you invest so much of yourself in something that it just feels impossible to do so. What are general tips you have as far as educating people? View Less »

Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

Business, Innovation & Managing Life Q&A (76 videos)