The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Innovator and entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram answers questions on handling deadlines, being creatures of motion, working with people vs. as a 'hermit,' making big changes in life, managing holiday plans, working for a global company, and balancing time zones. Delve into the challenges of managing work-life balance, inspiring others, advancements in AI projects, expanding horizons, and deciphering historical connections.

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 tell us some not-widely-known insights about prime numbers? Are the distances between twin primes now quite well known, though? - What does the factoring learned in an Algebra 2 class actually do in a real-life situation? - ​​Assuming one-way functions don't exist, could the uncertainty given by a multiway function be able to save cryptography? - ​​How can we prove this randomness on a big scale? - ​​Could there be an inverse of the law of entropy increase? Something like under certain conditions, structural organization always increases? Which maybe gives rise to something like bioevolution? - Is there really an infinite amount of primes?

Stephen Wolfram discusses the historical origins of gazettes, the preservation of historical knowledge, the supercooling of the universe, quantum field theory, the evolution of string theory, the value of old artifacts, and the philosophical implications of observer theory.

Physicist Stephen Wolfram discusses the concept of biological evolution through a minimal computational model, exploring adaptive evolution, fitness neutral mutations, rule evolution, and longevity in cellular automata rules. He delves into the analogies between natural selection and engineering design, parallels between cellular automaton rules and biological organism processes, and the shared computational irreducibility in physics and biology. Wolfram traces the historical evolution of biological concepts and computational models, while reflecting on his scientific journey through complexity and evolutionary adaptation.

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 do you manage conducting deep/long-term innovation with short-term commercial and funding necessities to keep the lights on? - How well would you say your current understanding of business and academics is today in comparison to when you first started your career? - What is your perspective on AI's omnipresence and ability to introduce a universal basic income into the strata of societies/economies on Earth? What rules will be applicable? - Do you think that with the disappearance of physical labor due to AI automation, it will make a comeback as a healthy hobby? - ​​How do you anticipate AI-to-AI conversations? What sort of information and insights are likely to emerge from these conversations? - ​​Do you ever take time off? - Would you say that a person whose job is also their hobby is a happy person, or a person lacking in both the job and the hobby? - ​Is game theory useful for running a business? - Not necessarily business, but fun... ​Have you ever been to a magic show? - How have interview processes changed since you began your career? - Are there ways to improve application screening and potential candidates? - Could VR/AR environments be a way to test candidates in the work environment? - Should there be an AI system that does computational language design? - The computational language could then be used to tackle problems of any kind and feed back to the language-design AI. - Do ever worry you'll end up like Wittgenstein, solving philosophy and the boundaries of science with an innovative math-related system, then a couple years later decide you're wrong?

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: Which do you think is more likely, teleportation or time travel? - I'm curious about accurately reconstructing the past using present data. Imagine a pool table where we can trace ball trajectories backward from current positions and vectors. If this works for a simple model, could we apply it to reality, tracing back to the very first moments of the universe? This could be like a "playback" of history. Do you think it's feasible with sufficient data, advanced computation and AI assistance, or are there insurmountable challenges? What ethical considerations might this raise? - We are definitely generating a germ factory on our keyboards and mice. We should use it. - "There is one more way to get from one place to another." This is what gravitational lensing is when light travels on multiple paths to us, right? - At this level, wouldn't there be some ambiguity, e.g. many different possible motions of molecules would produce the same pattern on sand? - Weren't there recently studies from MIT that were able to make hash collisions on purpose? - ​Will a web browser ever have a native runtime for a language other than JavaScript, e.g. Python, Wolfram Language, etc.? - It worries me, letting a user space code run into kernel space directly. - Is LLM the wrong direction for AI?

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 would you describe what you do? Can you contain it to a single sentence? - What advice do you have for future programmers? - Any advice for someone content to just "get by" financially, with zero interest in the usual understanding of "career" and probably no kids–just looking to focus on other things? - Why don't you quit CEOing and commit full time to investigating whether nature is completely computable? Does running the everyday things help? Or do you just still find it fun? - Do you think there will come a major shift in business planning with AI? - ​How much control do you maintain over the Wolfram Institute? Do you find that loosening your grip on management of the fellows' research allows for a higher chance of success in discovery? - There is this tension regarding remote working vs. being in the office. From my experience in remote-working teams, juniors/new starters take a few months before they are efficient. It appears you have mastered remote working with your teams. What do you think makes remote working a success? - Whenever you were, or are, learning new stuff as part of your independent research efforts (whether that's directly related to your work at Wolfram Research or for your own purposes), do you have a structured purpose, i.e. "I will learn X subject, topic by topic," or do you take a looser approach to things? How do you know how much time to dedicate to your various research interests? - How is innovating "outside the system" different from working within institutions? Is one better than the other for certain fields?

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: ​How did taxation work before money was invented? - How did trading happen between nations that used different number systems? - Can you discuss the role of ancient civilizations, such as the Greeks, in laying the foundations of modern science and technology? - ​Did Isaac Newton spend a significant amount of time attempting to transmute lead into gold? Did he believe in all of the miracles described in the Old Testament? - What was the greatest technological advancement to come out of the Roman Empire? - ​Given what we know now about symbolic representations and languages, what do you make of the break from computable mathematics in the 1800s/1900s and our current set-theoretic foundations?

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 is it that animal species all look relatively similar, or at least similar across a breed (ex: dogs, golden retrievers), yet all humans have unique features?​​ - ​What's your intuition for Euler's number, e?​ - In the recent Halloween spirit, is there any science behind ghostly appearances?​ - If an advanced civilization lived on Earth one billion years ago, would there be signs of there existence in today's time?​ - How does photography work? How are we able to capture an image so easily, whether on film or on a phone screen?​ - Kind of a similar topic: how do mirrors reflect images, and can we trust these images or do they change our perception?​ - Is there a number like e or pi that instead of being small (under 10) is big (like over 100)? How do these numbers get specific notation/names?​ - How many digits of pi can you recite at this moment?​

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: Will startups survive using AI and ML Technology? If so, how to compete with big industries? - How often do you find yourself stuck on what to do next? How do you decide on what project to move forward with? - How do you prepare for conference talks? Do you ever get nervous/stage fright? - Someone asked EW Deming how he felt about his speech and he responded with "I know what I said, but I am not sure what they heard." - I bring my cats to talks so they can look cute if I bomb. - Any thoughts to what a leader or manager can do to support team members to learn and manage stress? - I understand this is a very context dependent question, but lately a lot of large organisations earning profits in the billions have been scaling down their workforce. As a CEO, what would you say are common drivers/motivators behind these trends of scaling down? - What would you say is your favorite aspect of being CEO? What is your least favorite? - I would like your advice. I will retire in about 3-4 years, do you think it is too late to start learning ML, Data science, the entire artificial intelligence environment, with all the mathematics that entails? I was thinking of dedicating part of my day to streaming as a hobby. Something to keep my mind active. - I am in the software QA and testing industry. One of my challenges are convincing decisions makers about investing in early testing approaches to reduce project and product risks later. As a CEO, how would you be convinced to add priority to testing in an organisation? - Any advice on being prolific/focusing as a college student? Specifically the tradeoff between open-ended exploring and focusing. - ​I think a huge amount of the value of college is having informal discussions with small groups of people you care like. Obviously not compatible if you're focused on GPA. - Hermits acquire cats, not children!