History of Science & Technology Q&A: Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (August 2, 2023) »

1 hour 10 minutes

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Do we know what the first piece of technology was? If Alan Turing had not died at age 41, what might he have worked on during the remainder of his life? What if von Neumann lived longer? Would computation and cellular automata have any potential? Who was the first who used statistics to predict something? Having recently watched the Oppenheimer film and seen portrayed there Einstein, Gödel and Oppenheimer at this small lake, I realized that there have barely been any relevant theoretical insights in the last few decades, especially compared to about one hundred years ago. What does this mean for the science of the next hundred years? Where do you see applied psychology in a decade? Is the quantification of behavior and thought going to be a shift, as advertised? Could you discuss the history of cellular automata? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (July 19, 2023) »

1 hour 37 minutes

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Can you discuss a bit of your personal history with AI? When did you first become interested in the idea? Have you seen Oppenheimer yet, or do you plan to? What can you say about the history it's based on? Have new scientific discoveries historically initiated out of myths? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (June 7, 2023) »

1 hour 9 minutes

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How did scientific disciplines originate and evolve through the centuries? Do you think Apple's new VR headset will be much different than previous releases of other VR headsets? What do past releases of similar products predict? VR kinda reminds me of video game systems. Your product may be fantastic, but if the content/software isn't up to snuff, it's probably going to fail. These glasses and headsets need to be comfy and miniaturized to become suitable for everyday use. What are use cases in education for these new headsets? Perhaps AI can be used to translate existing educational material into VR-suitable content. View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (May 24, 2023) »

1 hour 26 minutes

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Are the stars and constellations we see today the same that were seen by the ancient civilizations who first studied them? Do star positions ever change? What do you make of the relationship between rhetoric and math? They are held in contradistinction, but I am thinking of the relation between rhetorical invention and Chaitin's idea of math-creativity. What about sudden novas and comets? Sudden shifts in orbits? Is the Moon moving away measurable compared to human history? As in, since humans started recording history, did the Moon appear to get 10% smaller or so? How will history be able to correct the continuous conundrum of the accuracy of our forefathers' discoveries, inventions and ideas? Additionally, how can we as humans preserve this? How did early civilizations explain supernovas? Did they understand it as a star exploding? How did they come to this conclusion? "The stars are like the Sun, but far away." When said for the first time, this must have been crazy to hear for others. How often were ideas like these disregarded at first? How did researchers of this time convince society of their findings? Is it possible that errors in translation have affected results of research? Are there any examples of this in history? When was the first time anyone considered what the angle of our solar system's ecliptic is relative to the Milky Way's galactic plane? Apparently, the angle is about 60 degrees. Why did science evolve so rapidly in the Western world? What's there to say about alchemy in history? Is that because ethical questions are fundamentally computationally irreducible questions? How do you filter out the "good new" from the "bad new"? It's remarkable that old ideas stood the test of time. View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (May 10, 2023) »

1 hour 28 minutes

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When researching, do you find it's more helpful to stay close to modern times in terms of content, or do findings from hundreds of years ago also prove valuable? Can you talk about the history of theories of cognition and consciousness? What did the ancients think? Did Gödel or Turing think about this much? Does ChatGPT disprove Penrose's Orch OR? Aristotle, Leibniz, Godel, Wolfram: How were/are these philosophers able to somewhat understand the idea of universal computation? How did they and you reach those insights? Is there something you could speak to about von Neumann's work to understand that the models of computation could relate to the mind? Has the importance of areas of science shifted in history? What was the main focus of science five hundred years ago? One hundred years ago? Ten? Is there a connection between these advances in science and education? Does education evolve with these changes? What has been the most important invention that has improved research overall? Right! By 1991 we had ERIC for upper-graduate research, and it was a game changer. No more need for librarians in the traditional way and history at our fingertips. Historically, what have been the the most difficult problems or obstacles for us to overcome or solve in the areas of science and technology? About unintended consequences of revolutions: what lessons from the Industrial Revolution have we learned that we could use for the AI revolution? Do you think it's fundamentally possible for science as we know it to hit a wall at some point and slowly degenerate into a nonproductive state? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (April 26, 2023) »

1 hour 40 minutes

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Can you discuss the history of programming languages? Is programming always associated with computers or were there other forms of programming? Didn't IBM have its own extremely labor-intensive "telegraph" system? How do you think Ada Lovelace would view the current age of AI? Sometimes I wonder what'd happened if Newton or Gauss had access to digital computers. Any thoughts about Plankalkül? Isn't mathematics itself following rules? Could you talk about the history of cybernetics and the idea of feedback loops in general? How are the history of education and programming connected? When did degrees in programming become significant? Do Wittgenstein's experiments with language models have any relevance to LLM and AI today? View Less »

Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A (81 videos)