[nphardon]

There's a great discussion with Stephen Wolfram on the Sean Carroll podcast. Listening to it made me think very highly of Wolfram. He's a free thinking, eccentric, mathematician, scientist; who got started doing serious work at a very young age. He still has a youthful creative approach to thought and science. I hope LLMs do pair well with his tools.

[lioeters]

To save others a search, here's the podcast with Wolfram.

Stephen Wolfram on Computation, Hypergraphs, and Fundamental Physics - https://podbay.fm/p/sean-carrolls-mindscape-science-society-... (2hr 40min)

I'm a fan of his work and person too. Not a fanatic or evangelical level, but I do think he's one of the more historically relevant computer scientists and philosophers working today. I can overlook his occasional arrogance, and recognize that there's a genuine and original thinker who's been pursuing truth and knowledge for decades.

[mr_mitm]

Sean also publishes transcripts of all episodes; https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/07/12/155-...

[atonse]

Same here. I've found the "me me me" a bit off-putting over the years, but can't deny that he is a genuinely smart, interesting, and forward thinking person. I especially enjoyed his writings on measuring every aspect of his life [1].

Also Wolfram (person and company) don't seem to be stodgy and stuck in old ways. At least as an outside observer (I'm not a mathematician, nor do I use Wolfram's main tools), seem to handle new trends with their own unique contributions to augment those trends:

Wolfram Alpha was a genuinely useful and good tool, perfect for the times.

These tools will actually further supercharge LLMs in certain use cases. They've provided multiple ways to adopt them.

Looking forward to see what people will do with this stuff.

1: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-ana...

[kylecazar]

He live streams the (internal) Wolfram Alpha product meetings on YouTube. It's really interesting to watch, I've been a fly on the wall for years.

[nphardon]

I knew about this but never attended, so cool!

[lcdryuga1983]

I tried finding this but couldn't find them on youtube. Can you please share the link for one of the videos?

[dchest]

It's under the Live tab of Wolfram's channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@WolframResearch/streams

Sessions are called Live CEOing, e.g.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id0KH0sfHI8

[kylecazar]

Thanks, I should have linked. Also he cross-posts to his site:

https://livestreams.stephenwolfram.com/category/live-ceoing/

The next one is today, 4:30 PM ET!

[lcdryuga1983]

Thank you!!

[jazzyjackson]

He's been in AI-land forever, the whole idea of Wolfram Alpha circa 2009 was to transform natural language into algorithms. I met him briefly in New York when he was on a panel on AI ethics in 2016, and ya, dude is sharp.

[jadbox]

I'm fairly certain Stephen Wolfram will be one of the few intellectuals today that will still be remembered in 50 years.

[SpaceNoodled]

I already remember him from 25 years ago

[squeefers]

he seems to be a good software engineer at least, but what about his science? does it all revolve around re-modelling the universe in his software?

[pletnes]

He got famous solving quantum field theory problems

[squeefers]

he seems to think his times better spent on software than science it seems. i take it he didnt really crack anything of worth on the physics side then?

[boznz]

To be fair, he's been trying, he's a big fan of cellular automaton.