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: 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.

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 is your favorite blog/book you've written? Any specific reason, why or why not? - How was your trip? Was it for business or just for fun? - As a remote CEO, do you ever get cabin fever from being home constantly? Do you try to keep work in certain rooms of your home to combat this? - Have you tried anything like tracking your sentiment as you work by using a neural net to analyze a video feed of your face/body? - I'm struggling with this nagging feeling that I'm progressing slower than I want to. I know I'm doing what I can, but I still can't shake it off. Have you ever dealt with this? If so, how? - What management strategies do you use to get the most out of your employees? - ​How can I increase the chance of my admission to a master's degree in complex systems or cognitive sciences? - How do you decide on when to make a big change in the technology you use/build, for example, switching Wolfram Workbench from Eclipse to VS Code? - Good project definition—formalizing what a project means—is one very important part. But how much do money/stock options/vacations (to avoid burnout) influence employee morale? Or giving them a project that they want to work on, or people they want to work with? - I've been one to say, "If I get more money, I'll care more." In the end, it didn't work. It's better to optimize for things that you just like working on. - What do you think about code review/peer review? Does it slow down a company or research? Do you think there are other alternatives to this? - How often do you work on the Physics Project in terms of weeks or months? How do you manage your life to work on this when finding the rule of our universe has no business case (at least in the short term)? - ​How do you deal with confusion and the feeling of "I don't understand this"? - Given your knowledge of the foundations of math and physics: do you bother to research the fundamental theories of project management, or try an attempt to formalize it, experiment with different project definitions, etc.? - How is the process of picking a mentee? Do you look for specific clues? Is there anything an individual can do to stand out? - You seem to care a lot about the history of ideas in scientific areas. Do you think this is a must for producing meaningful work in research? - I work as an innovation consultant. For a year now I have been on a journey to redesign/innovate and develop a new type of computer case. But I battle with this feeling all the time that I will fail and don't have a chance against all the "giants." How do I overcome this feeling? Or do I just accept it and go on?

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: Could every exoplanet have a habitable zone if one could get just far enough away from the star? What makes a planet habitable? - Why do we measure sound using decibels? - What advances in synthetic biology do you think will happen in the short term, the long term and the very long term? Have you visited Ginkgo Bioworks in Boston? - AI-designed proteins that do biocomputation - These processes, in the case of life, exist in a coevolved physiochemical balance. That would be hard to reproduce. - How do you think space travel will change/improve as technology advances? Will it become a regular form of transportation sometime in the future? - When helicopters were first developed, people thought they would transform cities and be our new taxis. But they're too expensive. - On the subject of shorter travel times, I remember Heinlein suggesting in his books using suborbital rockets to travel between destinations. Would such an idea be too expensive for companies to run? Or would such an idea be feasible to cut travel time? - I think the cost and safety risks associated with space and underwater ocean tourism will keep them from ever being commonplace. - Now your perspective on what's possible for travel is different than the younger generations. - In relation to what you are saying about air travel, cellphones and computers, all of those technologies went through a long period (10+ years) of being luxury goods that only the richest people on Earth could use. The same will probably be true for space travel. Do you think that problem will get better or worse over time?

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: How did you begin your journey into the livestreaming world? It's not something I see most CEOs doing, and I must say it is enjoyable to see one such as yourself be available in such an open capacity to share your knowledge and engage with others. - Do you ever get overwhelmed with decision fatigue, dealing with so many topics and the feeling that you will never get everything done? - Have you ever made a bad decision on a project? Do you own up to it? What do you do about it? - Estimating the time to build a feature is hard. Have you found any task-estimation practice that works well? - Do you have unconditional confidence? - What allows us as human beings to be successful in our endeavors despite disbelief, discouragement, etc., while attempting to solve our problems in the world implementing tech, science and other domains? - Ideas can be great. Implementation will define how they go over. - What strategies can be used to break down research projects into tasks that can be distributed to collaborators in order to leverage the fact of being a group? - Do you think a career working on AI tools for use in science and mathematics is likely to have a big, positive impact?

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: Is there a way to digitize DNA sequences and examine them? - ​Is a complete family tree of humanity with billions of connections a realistic possibility? - Is DNA a tree or a semi-lattice? - How likely is it that genetic engineering can create many mammalian species with superhuman intelligence? - Can you speak on epigenetics? Has this effectively resolved the nature vs. nurture question by turning it into an invalid question? - Do viruses play an important part in evolution? - How does the brain distinguish signals coming from different senses? What is the difference between the signals coming from the eye vs. the ear? If everything is ultimately an electrical signal, is this not a difference in degree instead of kind? - What are the implications regarding the ability for the brain to acquire another sense that is unlike the five senses we already have?

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

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?

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 predict weather? - Basically, weather forecasting is an excellent example of computational irreducibility. - Can you discuss your recent blog on the second law of thermodynamics?

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: Congratulations on the recent blog post! Can you talk about the process of writing a blog post like this? Why did you decide to do a three-part series? - Congratulations! Refreshing. Great timing, as thermodynamics is now used in generative AI models, i.e. nonequilibrium thermodynamics. - What are your thoughts on salaries and compensation, especially for virtual/remote companies that employ people from different locations? - I really like the way you define different writing styles for different projects. What led you to do that? How do you define the limits of an article or book and go through the writing process? - I find that when I write something up and I have to back up all my assertions, I reveal what I should've been investigating in the first place. - ​How should one go about learning how to split equity when founding a company? How do you know if you are giving too much or too little? - You said you can understand French. Are there any other languages you're familiar with? Are there other languages you would like to learn or wish you would've learned? - Do you recommend exposing children to a second language? Is it harder to learn another language as you get older?

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: Do you think it's possible to sustain life on Mars? How far into the future do you see this happening? - Maybe biological switches would change everything for a biological machine. - Could you explain the fundamental principles of biology? - Aren't neurons the biological analog of switches? - Can machine learning help solve inverse scattering problems where the forward scattering problem is highly nonlinear? - How do x-rays work to see only the bones and ignore skin? - I think bone opacity also comes down to water contents (there is just more water in tissue). - Can those x-rays be used for automatic detection of changes within the molecule structure of crystallized solids as well? - Do you think ecology will play an important role in understanding molecular computation? - Ecology is a complex system. Physics is easy: just analyze a single particle's or body's motion. Ecology has vast interconnections and mechanisms.

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: 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.