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: Could mind uploading be achieved 20–40 years from now? - Memory in human brains is like RAM: it's gone the second you shut the human off. - What about copyright for bots based on real people? What are the legal implications? - If we could upload our brain to something else, would it be feasible to upload data to our brains or upgrade parts similar to that of upgrading one's computer? - What kind of compression algorithm is used on our thoughts? - Would it be possible to read brainwaves using AI? - ​​What is the "artificial" part of AI? As far as I can see, LLMs are a breakthrough in the study of intelligence itself. - Will technology have an effect on human evolution and ultimately change our physical bodies in the future, i.e. such as our eyes becoming optimized for looking at screens all day, like a built-in blue-light filter, or prioritizing finger shapes to better type on a keyboard or hold a phone... - What do you imagine the future of communication to be? We've had spoken word, mailed letters, telegrams, phone calls, emails and now texts. What's next? - I need an AI version of Socrates to speak with about being. - Are there limitations to using genetic data to understand language-related traits? If so, how might these limitations affect the accuracy or applicability of language models? - ​​Do LLMs work well in Egyptian hieroglyphic concepts? - Do you regard math as a "language"? If so, would you suggest "talking" math out loud with a child? - Stephen mentioned in a recent podcast that certain subject matters in certain academic fields are in a position to be combined with computation and haven't been so far–and stated that it was low-hanging fruit if one was to do it. I was wondering if Stephen could give some examples of these "low-hanging fruits."

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: What advice do you have for business investors to pick the right ideas? - ​​What about repetitive herds like AI, and especially VR? - VCs don't care to move science forward, in my opinion. - How could a knowledge-based economy be structured, and is it possible for AI and cryptocurrencies to assign value to goal-oriented AI systems that enhance human survival and curiosity? - Just as all true innovations change something in the world for the better, is it true that all innovations can, if properly organized and packaged, make a lot of money? What are the intersections of innovation and business? - What responsibilities appear when one generates a successful tech company? - So what you're saying is that we need an AI tutor tutor? - Innovation in technology is often putting a double-edged sword in the hands of many. How can I come to terms with it morally if someone abuses the power of the technology I invented? - How would you foster repeated innovation in a company, especially for a company with an established product or service? - ​What's the best/worst thing about owning a company to you? - How do you market or demo a product that is a vast improvement over existing methodologies but takes a massive effort to learn? - What do you do in a situation where you have a new idea, but the tech isn't there yet? - I'm joining a very large law firm to help them think through what the firm will look like as they adopt LLMs and GPTs. If you got charged with this task, how would you approach it? - ​Have you thought in the past to buy a company instead of developing your own? - ​​How far is AI from setting its own goals/objectives?

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: ​What is the reason behind an eclipse? How does it happen? - Can we still be wrong about the position of Earth and its motion, or is that debate over? - Earth's moon is important for the tides and for the world climate. - Weren't there experiments reflecting lasers off the Moon before the Apollo missions? - Do other planets experience eclipses?

Stephen Wolfram plays the role of Salonnière in an on-going series of intellectual explorations with special guests. In this episode, a robot brought by a student from the Wolfram Summer School joins Stephen.

Watch all of the conversations here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-conversations

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 could the following people have done with Wolfram? Aristotle, Archimedes, Emmy Noether, Vega, etc.​ - ​​What would Ada Lovelace have done with current computing? And the possibilities?​ - Did Galileo have some mechanical math tools?​ - How does the abacus fit into the story of calculators?​ - What did Ada Lovelace say when asked about her coding style? "My code is like poetry, it's logical, elegant, and never divided by zero!"​ - Would authors such as Shakespeare find any use in Wolfram tech? How might he react to technology in general?​ - What about someone like Socrates? Or Plato?​

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: What is the future of business? - What's the future of contracting and procurement? Can AI and crypto indeed create "smart contracts," or is that a utopian vision? - How do you see universities keeping up with AI? It seems that universities will even more become a preselection for corporations. What are your thoughts on it? - What is your opinion on terraforming the Moon? - Having corporations with the means (money) as well as nations that have the forethought to have their own supercomputers, how do you see the inevitable increase in the gap between the ultra–high-tech nations/corporations and the rest of the developing world?

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: Can business ventures be a "one-man show," or is it a requirement to have a team? - If I wanted to start a blog, what advice do you have for this process? How do you maintain your writings? - Are there any blogs you are currently working on? - How do you think Wolfram would be different if it were based in Silicon Valley? - So Stephen's moral is "Follow the weather." I also don't want to establish an office where there is gloomy weather. - ​​So you think complex and write complex, instead of simplicity as guidance. Does someone with a sense of simplicity fit into your company? - I gave up on the idea of incorporating science in my business/income life. I'm curious about your case. Do you like the process of production/commercialization/management? - Innovative companies need a culture of dealing with failure. Can you quantify failure for measuring the innovative rate? - Is there opportunity to be a CEO of a company that employs AI? - How did you achieve product market fit? - Is there a place for a consulting firm that helps with dealing with failure (as an instrument of innovation)? - Can you remember a time in your life when you realized learning was fun? I imagine a child Stephen Wolfram sitting at a desk learning physics, then having realizations. - Do you look for practical or monetary value when choosing a project? Do you have advice for folks who aren't as financially independent? - What is your advice for building standard operating procedures (SOPs)?

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: Can you talk about the history of hearts? Why does the human heart not resemble the heart shape seen most commonly in other forms? - How did scientists discover the brain and its purpose? When did this happen? - What about the theories that say that neither the brain nor anything else in the body is the "site of consciousness" (e.g. "the brain is just a receiver")? There's at least some stuff there that can't be easily dismissed. ​​- Any thoughts on Panini, who wrote a meta-rule to decode the rule conflicts in the linguistic algorithm? - How has technology influenced the development and preservation of languages? 0 Why did the Latin language "die"? Do you think it would be widely used if it had survived? - The Pirahã, a tribe in Brazil, have a very peculiar way of talking. They don't include numbers and time, if I understand. - How do linguists reconstruct ancient languages they have little direct evidence of?​ ​​- Would the Greek spoken at the time of Aristotle be fully intelligible to speakers of modern Greek? - How did accents and dialects evolve (for example, UK English vs. US English)​? - The reconstructed 1700s London accent sounds somewhat American, I thought? - ​​Are there still undiscovered writing systems to be discovered? - ​​Do you have any comments on the relationship scientists have had with the philosophy of science? - ​​If one views religion as a function whose input is belief and output is explanation of "the unknown," then could science ("many universes" in quantum theory, for example) be construed as such?

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: ​Have you had a chance to try Apple's new VR headset? - Do you think travel vlogging is a new possibility with the headset? - Do you think motion sickness will be a problem with Apple's headset? - Will AI courses be common in curriculums? If so, how would you approach the subject? - Do you think VR headsets have any place in the classroom? Or maybe they're a new opportunity for remote learning? - Can you explain the tech behind Apple's new headset? Is it a realistic everyday use item? I just can't seem to grasp a new trend of walking to get coffee and bumping into headset wearers. - One thing I like: let the AI first ask a few basic questions and let the student define some words—not for judging them on it, but for gauging what they already know/understand. - What would happen if I were walking at 90% the speed of light? What would I see looking through my Apple VR headset? - What is a magnetic field and in what medium does it exist? - Do you think it will be possible to make the headset smaller in the future?

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: Do you think the plateau of LLMs will be at the level of understanding language? - Once it does plateau, it will start to taper off and we'll need to use a different technique. - How do you know that our brains aren't already using compression? - The AI could make far more precise classifications than we make, leading to new words and their very precise and peculiar meanings. - What seems more important to me is just the speed of the medium that AI has and how quickly it can process all of the interrelations, even when it's just forty thousand concepts, let alone larger context. - Which language is best at this compression? - Is there room for significant advancements in mathematical notations?- A single biological neuron has been shown to be able to perform an exclusive OR operation. A current simple artificial neuron can't do that. Do you think we are underestimating the power of biological neurons compared to artificial neurons? - Did the neural nets that you were playing with learn after their minds were blown? - ​​What is your view on emergent phenomena? -Do you think it is possible to predict all the emergent abilities AI can possibly obtain? - Will humanoid robots usher in an age of abundance? - Can a higher intelligence ever transcend computational irreducibility? - Why does pessimism toward future technology exist? My experience is that most people's default opinion on future tech is "Let's not do this." - Can we calculate how captured wind energy will influence the weather in the future if we become fully independent from fossil fuels? - What is there to say about the future of food science? Will someone be able to recreate Willy Wonka's creations? - Most of the energy in wind is not on the ground, it's over oceans and up in the sky. ​​- Could one devise a "computation engine" analogous to a thermodynamic engine, where useful work is a consequence of information processing? - Can AI solve the taste problem as it did the protein-folding problem? - If we could run our evolution over and over again, maybe we could see ourselves in some different shapes, floating in space with different ways of communication. For example, we could exchange thoughts telepathically, or maybe we could influence objects without physical contact. - What are your thoughts on this? - Would it be easier to genetically modify kiwi instead?