The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (March 12, 2025) Mar 18, 2025

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa

Questions include: Is academia the only real career path if one just wants to learn and do research? - What are the risks for using AI/LLMs to do my technical writing job so I can focus on prompt engineering for the future of my field? - You've at the very least been told all sorts of interesting things that you can't currently repeat publicly. Would you ever consider writing a book or articles that would be locked for x years? - How would you guarantee an AI doesn't break an NDA accidentally? - Will "LLM psychologist" be a future career path? - Are websites receiving fewer visits due to the rise of AI agent/assistant apps that provide advice on products or services? - I, Robot by Asimov is a highly recommended, excellent collection of problems with the three laws. - Any suggestions on how to get someone to review my papers? I'm an antisocial autodidact with no academic backing. It's been impossible to get anyone to even consider my work. - If you make better rules, people will find better loopholes. - What are your thoughts on how a business specifically can do high-quality science? Companies like big AI labs seem to be doing well in this respect. Are they a good model for other companies doing science in other fields? - Historically, how much effort have great scientists with important contributions put into showing, or "marketing," their ideas? - The best teachers are the ones that ask the right questions from the students. Not telling them what to think. - How is a STEM background useful in entrepreneurship?

Science & Technology Q&A for Kids (and others) [March 7, 2025] Mar 12, 2025

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: Can you talk about lambda calculus? - Any thoughts on numerology? - My current favorite approximation to a constant (e, in this case) is (1 + 9^-4^(7*6))^3^2^85, which uses each of the digits 1–9 only once and is accurate to 18 septillion digits. - Atmospheric noise is about as random as we can get, I think. - How does IBM Watson AI stand against modern LLMs? - Would the LLM have the same reaction time to compete and press the buzzer as humans? - Is it possible someday we may predict the weather years in advance? - Well then, is weather a good random sequence? - How do you calculate wind speed if wind is just a pressure difference? - If the Earth started rotating in reverse, would that have an effect on weather? - What would it take to stabilize the weather (like using wind farms in reverse or controlling ground albedo or atmosphere composition) so that we know it exactly? - Can the Earth's tilt ever be affected? What kind of changes would this cause? - There is a rather large difference between what the ideal climate would be and what changes will mean trouble for us, given our current infrastructure. - Even the weather can't agree on what the weather should be.

History of Science & Technology Q&A (March 5, 2025) Mar 11, 2025

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: What is the history of game theory? What are some successful and less successful applications of this theory? Can you speak about John Nash's work? Did that have any influence on your automata work? - I wonder if that code by Nash exists anywhere? It would be interesting to read. - Do you view the world as being governed by randomness or order? - Would you ever write a book intended to explain the history of the ruliad/Physics Project? - Have you studied the history of cognitive neurological abilities of scientists throughout the ages, things like long-term memory, imagination, creativity...? - Do scientists invent tools first and then look for a problem to use them on, or do they find a problem first and then invent the tool to crack it? - What is your favorite "age" of science? - How did early mechanical computers like the Babbage Engine influence modern computing? - Do you think Ada would have had more success in science and math today than she did when she was alive? - Would you say you research more of the history of people or history of their projects/research? Which do you find more useful?

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (February 26, 2025) Mar 04, 2025

Show notes

Questions include: Physicists that "could code" used to be the hot commodity; is it helpful now? Seems like CS/ML people are more in demand than physicists now—why? - I find that building simple frameworks in software GREATLY helps understanding of the underlying material. Mathematics especially, but I don't think it's limited to hard sciences. - I kind of doubt my trying to self-teach cryptanalysis is going to be very transferrable. - Would you consider "science communicator" a career? What skills would be most important? - How would you think about approaching school in the age of AI and LLMS? Should I, as a university student, embrace AI and LLMs? Or should I avoid them to eliminate risks of being too dependent on technology? - I did specialized things for the government and just got laid off. There are no similar jobs in the public sector. How can/should I pivot? - Is it better to stay at one job and "move up the ladder" over decades like our parents did or adopt this trend of staying at a company for no more than three years before salary-shopping elsewhere? - Do you see any solution to the "iron law of oligarchy" on the scale of generations? - Interesting point; so how do we break the mold? I'm northeast England, a deprived region—any advice to get my children (15F, 20F) to realize their potential? - What about economic barriers to "success" and fields where someone can be successful needing expensive education? - What would you say to someone who could change the world but who lacks any resources or academic backing, so nobody wants to help?

History of Science & Technology Q&A (February 19, 2025) Feb 25, 2025

Show notes

Questions include: - Can you talk about the history of pi? - "Pi day of the century." - Is pi still being researched today? Or is it a solidified concept? - Was there always a connection between "pi" and "pie"? - Can pi be used for data compression? - Is the only reason pi shows up more than tau because we USE pi more often? - If we used tau, it would have been 24/tau^2 instead of 6/pi^2, right? - How was your experience with slide rules? Did Leibniz or Newton use tools like a slide rule? - My 8th-grade (1983-ish) teacher didn't allow calculators, but he let me use my slide rule. - Would you rather be stuck with just a slide rule or just an abacus? - What is your favorite "artifact from the past" that you own... any interesting stories? - What's your favorite artifact from the future? - Many key ideas in computer science existed before we had the hardware to implement them (Turing's computer, neural networks in the 1940s). What ideas today do you think are ahead of their time in the same way? - Technology has progressed at an incredible rate during the last two centuries. That seems quite unusual relative to other periods in history. Are we bound to enter a new era of stagnation or regression? Or can we just keep going? - How would you think about cellular automata if you were born in, say, ancient Greece/Rome or Egypt? Or even the 1800s? - Is there a history of people discovering the concept of the ruliad and thinking about it from a different perspective (mathematical, scientific, religious or otherwise)? - I would be interested in hearing about the bug of Alan Turing. - It seems like our definitions of "science" and "technology" have evolved over the years. Are they historically the same thing?

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (February 14, 2025) Feb 20, 2025

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: In the spirit of Valentine's Day, what is the future of bionic hearts? Would this be a way to make humans more efficient? - How would you think about a world in which all of the work is done by robots and AI? - Architects using computerized/AI tools will result in less demand for architects overall, thus less people getting to do architecture. - Do you think the current methods of training and using AI/LLM are here to stay for a while, or is there a real possibility of an alternative machine learning approach appearing and being superior and more efficient? - What would you think about spiking neural nets with a new non-differentiable learning algorithm? Is it the path to smarter AI? - I read from an expert that correcting the errors in a later prompt results in more errors. It's better to go back to the original prompt. - Do you or your team actively work on the alignment issues with AI and are you worried about the next 10 years with regard to that? - Do you see a danger in the trend toward anthropomorphic AI and providing AI systems with human-like attributes? - I wonder what will happen when future AI models are trained on material that shows them the actual results of their past actions. - What are some near- and medium-term breakthroughs that could potentially make the creator a trillionaire? Off the top of my head, fusion power, far more efficient batteries or novel propulsion systems.

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (February 12, 2025) Feb 18, 2025

Show notes

Questions include: What are the qualifications to be considered an "expert" in a specific field of science? - What do you think was the hardest problem that you've solved? - Does fractional calculus have any meaningful application? Should I just abandon it after PhD? - What are the implications of using hypergraphs in generative AI, or AGI? - When will we get to adopt our own robot pets? I'm allergic and would love a dog. - My Roomba is my pet. - I'd love a guard robot dog. - Did you watch the Superbowl on Sunday? - Do you think we will reach a point in technology where computers themselves will have personalities...like you go to the store and that's one of the features to consider along with GPU, CPU, etc.? - Have you ever thought about the intersection of math and sports? And how that can be applied? There's great nerdy data in sports! - Do you think there's a danger of relying too much on technology? For example, automating home locks. - There were AI companies in the 1980s? - Do you play computer games? Or did you play console games in the 80s and 90s, like Mario and Tetris? - I do think though, that playing games helps keep the brain sharp. - With AR glasses, cats will never be able to walk in front of my terminal screen ever again! - Why are we the only animals who can encapsulate ideas with words? - Do you use any smart tech to categorize or organize your home library?

History of Science & Technology Q&A (February 5, 2025) Feb 11, 2025

Show notes

Questions include: When was complexity science invented? Was there a further back history than digital? - They always forget Aristarchus. - What role did category and type theory play for mathematics? - How would you think about approaching alchemical literature, knowing that it mostly employed coded language rather than being about literal transmutation into gold? - Was Newton not an alchemist? - The real secret is it's tungsten that can be turned into gold, hence the name "Wolfram Research." - Dirac, Einstein, Turing and Feynman are sitting in a room. What is the single word they all immediately agree on? - So... Dirac answered in Dirac delta function style?

Future of Science and Technology Q&A (January 31, 2025) Feb 06, 2025

Show notes

Questions include: Do you imagine humanity exploring "inner space" (i.e. virtual worlds ) more than "outer space"? - Could the spin of electrons lead to a communications system? - How would we evolve to live in space? Would we even evolve, without going into space? - Why is it you always wear the same checked shirt with the right-side collar slightly flattened...almost AI-like... - Do you think that the rules of human biology are computationally reducible, so that we eventually will be able to understand the aging of our cells? - The latest LLMs are doing very advanced mathematics. Do you think we can get AI to the point that it is solving open problems and creating new mathematics? - What is the next step for LLMs to advance? - Do a conversation with Joscha Bach please—it'll be amazing! - Have any of these LLM agents been trained on NKS? - Thoughts on this new "external reasoning" paradigm or more generally, reinforcement learning + LLMs? - How many years away do you think we are from grey goo (self-replicating nanomachines), if ever? - Are people considering (re-)training LLMs completely on scientific high-quality peer-reviewed papers?

Business, Innovation and Managing Life (January 29, 2025) Feb 05, 2025

Show notes

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa

Questions include: How do we know how far stars, galaxies, etc. are in space? - Can you tell about the science of gem cutting, brilliance, internal refraction, etc.? - Does that mean that objects with higher refractive indexes heat up more? - Are there any materials that slow light down enough so that we can actually see it traveling without technology helping out? - How would you describe science? And how are you staying a scientist? - Can you talk about scientific paradigms? - Interesting parallel to current research in LLMs that have so many variables and so much variability that reproducibility is extremely hard—even if it is "just" computers. - Do you think science has a problem with trying to tell nature how to behave rather than reporting on what nature is telling us? - What if you start the prompt with a script for the tech demo and ask the LLM to not go off script? - I've often been amazed at how LLMs sometimes reproduce realistic human behavior. We have seen them sometimes "lie" or try to "cover" a mistake. - What's your intuition now for what makes the best prompter? - Do you have any suggestions on coming up with ways to test hypotheses, especially ones that are more theoretical and difficult to test in the real world? How do you know when you have a good test? - How are diamonds made? - How can fermions adopt a condensate configuration, or can they?

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