Stephen Wolfram Livestreams

Future of Science & Technology Q&A (21 videos)

Biweekly ask-me-anything about the future of science & technology

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Future of Science & Technology Q&A:
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (May 24, 2024) »

1 hour 15 minutes

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Continuing the dinosaur theme, is it possible biology can repeat patterns of evolution? Is it possible for dinosaur-like creatures to reappear? Why is it as technology advances, it goes through phases of bigger to smaller to bigger? I've seen this with phones, computers, TVs, cars, etc. What does this say for the future of technology? ​​​​What would be the future of the personal computing paradigm? Would we see more remote cloud-like computing and storage in the future, essentially making personal computing devices obsolete? The current AI/LLM models aren't good at the mathematical and statistical computational methods. What areas do you think should be focused on in computer science and mathematics to teach these models to be better at computation and assist researchers and scientists? What do you think of the amount of data that gets processed or code that is run in terms of bytes vs. bytes that are used for storage in the world? What exactly is 5G? How is it different from 4G or 3G? Nowadays, instead of getting higher resolution, we can get higher color range and frame rate. If AI is being used for autonomous vehicles, then presumably technology could improve to the level where vehicles could "see around corners" by different vehicles communicating with each other, buildings, etc.—so the video stream is from multiple perspectives? Taking the concept further, could vehicles on a motorway and those joining seamlessly interweave at high speeds safely and traffic be diverted automatically in real time to ensure that there are no blockages etc.? Turns out that as computer displays get better, our sensor limitations turn out to be higher than we used to think. I recall reading something saying that 5G and low-latency connectivity would be important for self-driving cars. That seems somewhat unlikely to be an important component of self-driving now. What's the future of fiber optics? In the future, will cell towers be more advanced to prevent dead zones? View Less »
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Future of Science & Technology Q&A:
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (May 10, 2024) »

1 hour 3 minutes

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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? View Less »
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Future of Science & Technology Q&A:
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (April 26, 2024) »

1 hour 1 minute

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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... View Less »
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Future of Science & Technology Q&A:
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (April 12, 2024) »

1 hour 21 minutes

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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? View Less »
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Future of Science & Technology Q&A:
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (March 29, 2024) »

1 hour 8 minutes

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Regarding the April 8 eclipse, what should we know about the weather? What if it's cloudy or raining? What will the future of predicting eclipses look like? Will we be able to move the Moon to keep eclipses? The Moon gets further away because of friction in the oceans from tides, so could we play with that mechanic? I've seen a couple articles about attempting to build trains on the Moon. Would that be useful? Should we expect really unusual emergent properties from LLMs as we scale up the data more and more? ​​​​It seems erroneous to think it's a "more data" question; it's the opposite—"less data" (more generalization/transferability and efficiency) via integration of a "symbolic" framework/accelerator. Human senses capture an absolutely tiny sliver of what's going on. Would additional (strong) senses lead to bigger brains or more languages? Is human consciousness one-dimensional? Perhaps it's not so surprising that training AI on games is useful, when humans learn through play in early life. There is an interesting article about how the requirements of ChatGPT-7 would be massive, like 5 Gorge Dams or half the world's computers, and there isn't enough training data. What does it say about logic (and set/type theories) as a so-called formal language that LLMs can't just trivially do logic and reasoning? What's the best way to pass computational representation to language models, plain text or embeddings? View Less »
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Future of Science & Technology Q&A:
Future of Science and Technology Q&A (March 22, 2024) »

1 hour 6 minutes

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Do you have any plans, and when can we expect to see a S. Wolfram AI chatbot with voice? Do you think each AI iteration of the person would be similar at the start and then diverge in personality/intelligence as they continued to "live" and develop? ​​​​Are you comfortable with the average quality and correctness of AI-generated answers and commentary? ​​​​Due to the success of nature-inspired computing, I am really wondering if like our best bet is creating full-on human replicas, meaning similar learning experiences/processes... I like the architecture of having many bots with like a base that confer and like upload their findings to a global knowledgebase, then disperse on like new assignments or what have you after returning. ​​​​Do you think human brains compress data in a lossy way, and will future AI brains also have to use lossy compression methods to be more human like? Or would AI perfect memory be more desirable? ​​​​Could an element printer theoretically work, e.g. one feeds it with carbon atoms and it prints out an arbitrary element? ​​Can you explain the quantum LLMs idea, and what advantage exists in applying multi-computation, if any, to LLMs? What would an AI look like that is rewarded based on questioning rather than answering? ​​​​What do you think will happen when we understand prime numbers to their fullest? And when we can translate this knowledge to AI? View Less »
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