April 18, 2020

#89 – Stephen Wolfram: Cellular Automata, Computation, and Physics

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Show Notes

Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, mathematician, and theoretical physicist who is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, a company behind Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language, and the new Wolfram Physics project. He is the author of several books including A New Kind of Science, which on a personal note was one of the most influential books in my journey in computer science and artificial intelligence.

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EPISODE LINKS:
Stephen’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/stephen_wolfram
Stephen’s Website: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/
Wolfram Research Twitter: https://twitter.com/WolframResearch
Wolfram Research YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/WolframResearch
Wolfram Research Website: https://www.wolfram.com/
Wolfram Alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/
A New Kind of Science (book): https://amzn.to/34JruB2

This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter , LinkedIn , Facebook , Medium , or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts , follow on Spotify , or support it on Patreon .

Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
04:16 – Communicating with an alien intelligence
12:11 – Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey
29:06 – What is computation?
44:54 – Physics emerging from computation
1:14:10 – Simulation
1:19:23 – Fundamental theory of physics
1:28:01 – Richard Feynman
1:39:57 – Role of ego in science
1:47:21 – Cellular automata
2:15:08 – Wolfram language
2:55:14 – What is intelligence?
2:57:47 – Consciousness
3:02:36 – Mortality
3:05:47 – Meaning of life