History of Science & Technology Q&A (June 1, 2022)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Do you think we'll ever get to the stage of having flying cars? Is there any historical evidence? - Even now with traction control, anti-lock braking systems, automatic crash avoidance and the like, driving cars has automated "smart" safeguards nowadays. - It seems like many science discoveries or inventions happen due to some mistake or error that ultimately makes the insight or experiment work. How prevalent is this? - Can you talk a little bit about the history of automated theorem proving? Do you think we are on the cusp of an era when computers will be proving theorems and mathematicians will interpret them? - I think one interesting question would be to flip that around: could one use theorem-proving algos to figure out why black-box neural nets do what they do? - Will artificial general intelligence be the future of automation or a symbolic language like the Wolfram Language? - I think the computational mathematics system of the future will be generating new languages, new notations, new proofs, new theorems and new conjectures. - Artificial intelligence is an effort to create electronic learning. Not human thinking. A self-learning program will not develop human-like emotions. It has no physiological needs, and it has no need to fear. It can be replicated, it can be backed up, it can be turned off and on.