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: ​If you had to explain your "Why Does Biological Evolution Work? A Minimal Model for Biological Evolution and Other Adaptive Processes" blog to middle-school students, how would you begin that discussion? - What is convergent evolution? - Different genotypes come to the same phenotype—did I remember that right? - Regarding your blog, ​​I think it might be interesting to run rules toward each other from opposite sides and adaptively evolve them for length. Cells that both rules would affect are won by the rule with more width. - ​Do you think life existed before it did on Earth? - What is the importance of biodiversity and ecosystems in biological evolution? - ​​About life: follow the water. - ​​Did microorganisms have teachers? Who was the Einstein of microorganisms? - If you put A LOT of laser in ONE spot, would that create matter?

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 you patent an algorithm? Machine learning models? - Will we need a new division of law for AI cases? What is the precedent? - ​​Can blockchain mitigate the AI "facts," or is it its own threat to communications and liberty? - ​​Can you rationalize a world where "free-to-use" AI services utilize licenses that allow free use, but then the operating company can capitalize on the content that they generate? - What is a good process for knowledge transfer from employee to employee? - If you had the chance to redo your life, would you choose differently in terms of what choices you made academically? - Have you written any books or do you have any thoughts on childhood education? Now that I have three kids at different stages, I find it challenging that the school curriculums are trying to make conforming students while lacking effort in individual talent discovery. What's your experience and how have you approached it? - Do you still check your emails regularly? I find it a distraction for productivity and originality due to the bombardment of emails, text and all of it. I see this as a potential area for AI to personalize, and it could be simple to make. What do you think? - Wolfram's writings are actually often a quite good read and have a unique humor. MUCH better than most papers that came out in the last 20 years. - ​​I want to do something that should be an internet-based business, and thermodynamics and its applications should be a central part of the business. Do you have any tips?

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: Have you used LLMs to analyze genetic language? - Will bacteria become more resistant/stronger against human bodies in the future? Or will humans become stronger? - Could you just build specialized cells from scratch using printed DNA? - Can machines replace organs? - Several years ago, I read about research into DNA being used as logic gates. Is this still an active area of research, or has it been dismissed as not useful? - To what extent do you think we'll attain some kind of universality regarding the reprogramming of live biological systems, on par with current software systems running on silicon substrates? - How can cellular automata and systems like John Conway's Game of Life provide insights into evolutionary dynamics? - Can artificial life simulations effectively replicate aspects of biological evolution in a controlled digital environment? - A baseline bacterium for which we fully understand the effect of every gene on its own and of all genes as a whole. - ​​Do you think gene regulatory networks function as "observers like us"? - ​​Might it be possible in the future where if there's a crime, we could put a DNA sequence into a computer and it would show a picture of that person. i.e. by simulating the evolution of the organism?

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: Are there exact matches or just similarities between complexity in nature (bio, evolution), society (political, religious) and technology?​​ - ​​How did the development of atomic theory by scientists such as Democritus, Dalton and Rutherford influence our understanding of discrete structures and the behavior of matter at the atomic level?​​ - How do historians know with certainty the identities of prominent historical figures? Could there have been more to the Socrates, Plato and Aristotle timeline?​​ - ​​Do the majority of historians of physics now have a favorable opinion of string theory?​​ - Is there any scientific reason "pure maths" concepts are picked up by physics much later?​​ - Do you find it our lack of human history odd, considering how long we have lived on this planet?​​ - With regards to notable people in history, humans seem to be completely obsessed with credit for their contributions—an interesting feature of the human ego. Taoist philosophy believes the Tao makes achievements and lays no claim to them.​​ - ​Can we reconstruct the lost works in history with AI scraping through contemporary reference scripts and searching for the influence lost writings had on known writings?​​ - That brings up the interesting point that there were likely MANY people "back there" who had amazing ideas that would have important applications today, but they didn't have the good fortune to be noticed and documented.​​ - How did the concept of zero originate and evolve in mathematical history?​​ - Do zero and infinity have the same origin?​​ - Interesting, but if I had three ducks and gave them all to you, surely the ancients must have had some concept of what that left me with?​​ - Speaking of string theory, what are for you the notable "dead-end paths" taken in the history of math/sci/tech?​​

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: Why use cloud computers if we could compute on the Moon? How could we get rid of the latency? - Would we consider artificially engineered protein-based organisms robots (or nanobots)? - Is it possible to design (sharpen) the brain by some kind of biological engineering? - How do you think Neuralink and similar tech will improve our lives? What would be the drawbacks? - Does the speed of the neuron influx limit the brain size? - ​​In the future, how likely is it that physicists will be able to detect individual gravitons? - What are the latest innovations in battery technology, especially concerning alternatives to lithium and cobalt in energy storage systems? - ​I'm curious on your thoughts on the hologram tech that's right around the corner...

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 businesses adapt to changing technology? Are there existing strategies to combat roadblocks in development? - Is Wolfram Language much faster today than it was 35 years ago? - What has been the biggest or most notable technological advancement in your lifetime? - ​​How do you think about the "buy" vs. "build" dilemma–notably for one so opinionated and driven to have it one's way as yourself, as opposed to being more compromising? - How do you think about and handle competition, be it business or technological competition (say LLMs vs. the Wolfram Language symbolic approach)? - Do you think having middle management in high-tech companies hinders innovation? - ​​You just mentioned that someone can't build something that took 30 years to build. Do you think that will change with AI advancing enough to cut build timeframes by orders of magnitude? - ​​Speaking of that area, what innovation and business lessons can be learned from Thinking Machines and such failed ventures? - Do you agree that technology is brimming with ideas and resources, many of which are free? This shift has transformed business approaches, with today's opportunities primarily centered around services. - I appreciate your approach to making software easy to use. I've used Oracle, SAP and JD Edwards ERP software and so much of it is overly complicated. We were tethered to them for support. - Any advice on starting a career in tech with everything moving at such a fast pace? - I've read about your endeavors, from writing books at 13 to earning a PhD at 20. How did you manage such accomplishments and cultivate the imagination needed for complex topics?

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: Are there languages or logic systems we haven't yet discovered from the past?​​ - Can smart keyboards help with this process of language discovery?​​ - ​​Do you view mathematics as a subset of language, or the other way around?​​ - How did different languages come to develop? Will we slowly move toward a universal language?​​ - "Ona, also known as Selk'nam (Shelknam), is a language spoken by the Selk'nam people in Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego in southernmost South America." Spoken by only one person.​​ - ​The distinction is the unique role of mathematics expressing and formalizing ideas in ways that transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries.​​ - Language came before humans, e.g. dolphins and whales; we just scaled it up and complexified it​. - Was Shakespeare's style unique to him? Would there have been a possibility for people to speak in a more poetic language?​​ - ​​I think language is closer to 1.5–dimensional, considering we have relative pronouns and other constructions that link up with previous statements, such that a 2D diagram of it can be made.​​ - ​​If I want to write a short statement, I prefer English. For a detailed style, I would prefer German... which is usually longer and not as nice to read as short English text.​ - Bulgarian is pronounced exactly as it is written. One of its quirks.​​ - If LLMs are hallucinating all the time and good ones are just hallucinating correctly/accurately most of the time, does that explain how Ramanujan might have arrived at his formulas without proofs?​​

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 rare was the recent New Jersey earthquake? How can we predict future earthquakes? - The Indian Plate is moving very fast. It's increasing the height of Mt. Everest by six centimeters every year. - I wonder if digging for oil and fracking, etc., have any effect on the plates? - How do earthquakes cause tsunamis? - It seems like studying underwater earthquakes vs. those on land might be a good way to investigate the "lubrication effect." - Solitary waves were discovered by the naval architect John Scott Russell in 1834. - Anything particularly interesting or surprising from the solar eclipse? It appeared that leading up to it, between the book and website, it was better understood than any previous solar eclipse before it happened. Now that it has happened, what interesting findings have there been, if any? - What causes Earth to have different biomes? - Why is there only one species of human? What happened to Neanderthals? - How do astronomers determine the composition of planets and stars that are light years away from us?

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 features will humans evolve in the future? Will we one day be able to look at the Sun with our naked eye? - What is there to say about the future of philosophy? It feels like such an ancient study. - ​​If empirical evidence indicates that there is a finite, digital, physical multiverse, then will the practice and philosophy of mathematics undergo huge changes? - Are all philosophers logicians? - Will we ever find a cure for the common cold? - Could that end up messing up our immune systems because they've always fought colds? - What about the possibility of injecting tiny computers into our blood cells? - Topically, you may remember a boom in nanotech ~20 years or so ago, including nano-robotics research labs and a subsequent bust of a sort. Where is that nanotech boom/bust cycle now and looking ahead? - For nanotech to really take off will require new foundational building blocks, mostly from a convergence of biotechnology and electronics research. We see glimpses of that from DNA sequencing/printing. - What do you foresee in terms of substrates of the future for computation? In the medium term? Long term? - Does the success of one field sometimes slow down other research fields?

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 young entrepreneurs? Can children be successful in business? - Is it good to have variety in my resume when applying for jobs? How valued are long-term employees of one company vs. an applicant who has had many different jobs? - How does one generate a succession plan for a company? - Do you think the software market is over-saturated? It feels like there are many untapped innovations in areas like materials sciences and hardware. - What's the best way to get funding for a physics-based R&D company? I am starting one and need help. - What are some benefits to an internship? - Is the AI development just a short-term fashion, like in the 80s? - ​​Will owning/running private businesses ever be superseded as an economic form? - I think the best advice for young entrepreneurs is "Don't do it." If they do it anyway, that's real entrepreneurship. - What would you say to individuals who are interested foremost in making a difference in the world rather than a monetary incentive? How would you weigh the choices between pursuing traditional academia, working on the cutting edge within the private sector or pursuing research in one's own time independently (assuming their life allows such freedom)? - How about setting up non- or not-for-profit R&D? - How much do you think businesses will have to adjust to account for AI workers if they take off? - What about one-person corporations? Zero-person corporations? - It seems to me that public libraries should offer access to journals as well as books. Thoughts? - ​​There is already an inundation of LLM-written, peer-reviewed papers, adding to your point. - In Sweden, we have a book bus that drives around with books to suburban areas.