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

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. Support this podcast
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https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w 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