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

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (March 8, 2023) »

1 hour 22 minutes

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Please discuss the history of graph theory and network theory. What was the role of computation? So graph theory evolved as a theory after practice, like thermodynamics and the steam engine? Graphs as knowledge representation were popular in AI the late 60s, and more formally in theoretical CS a decade later. Was it a big effort to integrate graphs in Wolfram Language? Is it missing some part of the recent developments? Has anyone formulated Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory in terms of graph theory? At what point in history did mathematics reach a level where a single individual could no longer learn all "known knowledge" at that time within their lifetime? It seems too often amazing discoveries go years without being picked up by a particular community. If Aristotle were alive today, how might he describe modern technology? How would one explain modern technology to someone from Aristotle's time? Would you say the words "soul" or "spirit" were used in the past in much the same way we use the term "software" today? Why would cellphones be inconceivable? They work the same way speech does. The only difference is that the ancients didn't know about the electromagnetic field. In your own experience, have there been any major changes to a field of study that changed the way one would view a certain topic? I remember being in school studying astronomy when Pluto was declared to no longer be a planet and my professor's lesson plan had to adapt in an instant. I like pondering what Professor Einstein may have been able to do with Wolfram|Alpha. View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (February 8, 2023) »

1 hour 18 minutes

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What would you say is the most important human-designed algorithm of all time? Historically, who has led the trends in science, practitioners or academics? Did Richard Feynman really think that "philosophy is baloney"? Did you ever discuss non-physics subjects? If simulation becomes sufficiently good in the future, will it cause experimental scientists to be out of a job? How did we go about solving the goat problem? According to the history of science, what might be the ratio of the number of minor paradigm shifts to the number of major paradigm shifts? What was the fifth class of cellular automata that almost was, which you mentioned in your personal history paper? Has an idea like the ruliad existed before, or is this a novel object? Neural networks show that combining two seemingly unrelated fields of research can produce great results, but our academic and business cultures are focused more on specialization. Your thoughts? What would a modern analog computer look like today? View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (January 25, 2023) »

1 hour 15 minutes

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Historically, what are some of the most prominent developments in the twentieth-century history of software design? I watched the recent NASA rocket launch and wondered what's new in the past 60 years. Why did American English develop common words for every third order of magnitude (million, billion, trillion)? Other languages seem to have different common words, like lakh in Hindi for 100,000. I remember a comment from an old programmer saying the first time they saw a screen used with a computer was in the movie 2001. Why is ChatGPT blowing up now when GPT-3 was known in 2020 and GPT-2 in 2019? How much do you think real science and technology are shaped by the ideas from science fiction? The thing about ChatGPT is that it uses the same architecture as GPT-3 with the same number of parameters. The fact that a fine tuning can create such a leap in capability suggests that we are in a hardware overhang. Has there been any technology in history that's been perfected (e.g. the wheel), or is there always room for improvement? Printers. Paper jammed 30 years ago, paper jams today. Let's not ask the AI to design a new type of paperclip. Paper jams happen today, but paper itself has become irrelevant. Such is the case with technology. Old technology doesn't get better, it gets replaced. When and why was dark energy hypothesized? Once we get 3D nano-replicators, we won't need roads; we can just teleport from place to place. View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (January 11, 2023) »

1 hour 22 minutes

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What could Aristotle have accomplished if he had a modern machine learning system? Could he have discovered logic? Didn't Noam Chomsky also do some work in the intersection between math/logic and language? I wondered if language models are based on that at all. Will the next generation of ChatGPT or VoiceGPT have any negative recourse, especially when it comes to impersonation? A similar Chomsky idea is "Can a submarine swim?" In English it can't, and in Japanese it can. Do you think AI presents an existential risk? If so, how could we mitigate it? How do you think Einstein or even Stephen Hawking would react to ChatGPT? Are there any figures in science who predicted this development? Given what we have learned from AI models, does learning from history allow us to better predict the future? Does modeling the past imply modeling the future? Ants are structured distinctly enough that it can lead to immediate conclusions on many levels. View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (December 28, 2022) »

1 hour 15 minutes

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Was the invention of computers inevitable? Will evolution always stumble upon universal computers, given enough resources? What are the implications for the laws of physics and reality? I don't think computing technology could have possibly been conceived until after the Industrial Revolution. Ideas alone don't govern how science evolves. It's a combination of factors, including technology, mode of production of society, etc. The Sun's computation helps sustain us. I like thinking about machine learning as a black box that gets to a human-comprehendable product, but the "reasoning" that enables it to get to that output is not really understood. Once we understand what's really going on in a machine learning model, we can be confident that its output is sound. I started playing chess lately and I noticed that high-level and machine chess are a lot like proof of computational work and willingness to commit it. Do you have any thoughts on this? I wonder how much power one would need in order to run a mechanical computer comparable to a modern CPU. Historically speaking, do you think the modern AI systems are unique in terms of replacing human work, or just another step in automation? I may change my email signature to "Written by ChatGPT. Please excuse any nonsense." It's tempting to think general AI could emerge from some digital version of evolution. That seems to require digital entities competing for resources and a "will" to fight for survival. Historically, how has written record keeping evolved? Will we ever revert back to oral records (spoken stories, songs, etc.)? GPT-4 and GPT-5 are going to be amazing. The question is whether the interviewer will care if the candidate is an AI. For some roles, it will not matter, and that number will increase. Has ChatGPT passed the Turing test? Or can it pass the test soon? I suspect the major deployment of AI in the short term will be phishing. For the time being, it can't replace regular employees at legitimate businesses because it can't be legally held culpable because it's not conscious. But for scammers, that's not an impediment. View Less »

History of Science & Technology Q&A:

History of Science and Technology Q&A (December 14, 2022) »

1 hour 24 minutes

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What is some history of thermodynamics you found interesting while working on your new project? What is the history of mathematical rigor? What's the history of chocolate? What technology allowed the creation of chocolate candies to become so popular? In the history of computer architecture and software, who are the most important pioneers of parallel processing? Did you ever use Xanadu's network communication/hypertext publishing technology? Can you discuss the history of GNU? How much more prevalent will cloud computing become in the future, as the need for computational resources is exponentially increasing compared to the cost-speed of processors? Can you talk about the history of the public's perception of its own scientific literacy? I think it also changed with the advent of memes, which made the most important subcultures swim up more easily than less important ones. Will we go back to science illiteracy? View Less »

Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

History of Science & Technology Q&A (73 videos)