Future of Science & Technology Q&A (December 1, 2023)
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?