Stephen Wolfram Q&A
Submit a questionSome collected questions and answers by Stephen Wolfram
Questions may be edited for brevity; see links for full questions.
Future Perspectives
(39)February 1, 1993
From: Interview by Michael Swaine, Dr. Dobb's Journal
Do you have any opinions on the dominant paradigms of today, and about which will survive into the next decade?
I think the transformational-rule paradigm is working fairly well. I think the functional paradigm is largely working well. I think the procedural paradigm sucks, basically. I think the fundamental problem with it is there’s much too much hidden state in the procedural paradigm. You have these weird variables that are getting updated and things that are happening that you can’t see. Read more
June 1, 1996
From: Interview by Stephen Collart, Euromath Bulletin
Symbolic computation as a research discipline has an uneasy existence between mathematics and computer science. Will this change? What can be done to change it?
Gosh, I’m not sure exactly what you mean. I’m not a great fan of a lot of academic work that goes on these days. I think a lot of areas of academia have become incredibly introverted: people just write papers that other people in their fields will read. They don’t seem to care much about anything outside. Read more
June 1, 1996
From: Interview by Stephen Collart, Euromath Bulletin
Do you believe that any further major general-purpose symbolic computation systems could be successfully launched in the future?
You mean Mathematica competitors? It depends what you mean by “major”. If we don’t do anything really stupid, I think it’s unlikely anyone else will reach a million users in the foreseeable future. But the more successful we are, the more there’ll be people who’ll want to claim that they’re building systems that are like ours. Read more
June 1, 1996
From: Interview by Stephen Collart, Euromath Bulletin
One sees a multiplication of smaller specialized systems whose design is also increasingly sophisticated. What balance and relationship do you see in the future between specialized and comprehensive systems?
I guess the specialized systems that seem to me to make the most sense are the ones built in Mathematica. They start from all the stuff we’ve done, then add specialized abilities. I don’t know why there are so many people building specialized systems in languages like C. I guess it may conceivably make for a better story for an academic paper—though I’m not quite sure why—but I don’t think it’s a good use of effort. Read more
June 1, 1996
From: Interview by Stephen Collart, Euromath Bulletin
The community has proponents of “free” software. Increasing numbers of researchers and better software engineering might make public domain systems increasingly serious contenders. What future do you see for the roles of free and commercial software?
Free software is fine when it doesn’t cost much to develop and support. But you can’t expect to have a really vital long-term product and make it free. What we see a lot with Mathematica packages is that the first versions are free: they’re made by one or two people at a university or some such. Read more
February 6, 1998
From: Interview by David Stork, Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality
A lot of things haven’t worked out exactly as 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted. Does that surprise you?
Well, given the level of detail in the movie, it’s an absolute setup to be proved wrong. I’ve got to say that I’m really impressed by how much was got right. And I think a lot of the mistakes are really interesting mistakes—mistakes that one learns something by seeing why they were made. Read more
February 6, 1998
From: Interview by David Stork, Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality
What kind of thing would make us sure we had detected extraterrestrial intelligence? What about receiving the digits of pi?
Well, that’s a tough one, for two reasons. First, how would we know that there was a complicated intentional intelligence generating those digits? You see, I’ve found some very simple systems that generate things like the digits of pi. Systems so simple that we could easily imagine they’d occur naturally, without intentional intelligence. Read more
February 6, 1998
From: Interview by David Stork, Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality
Will we find extraterrestrial intelligence?
I expect so. And probably eventually the argument about whether the signals we get from them are really “natural” or “artificial” will die down. But my guess is that history will work out so that we build artificial intelligence in computers before we find extraterrestrial intelligence. And the result of that is that finding extraterrestrial intelligence will be considerably less dramatic to us. Read more
July 7, 2002
From: Interview by Loch Adamson, The New York Times
What kinds of scientific contributions might come about in response to your book? And when do you think we might see them?
I’m probably more nervous about people trying to apply what I’ve done in the book too quickly, rather than too slowly. It would be bizarre if my attempts to sort of change the direction of quite a bit of science were, you know, immediately absorbed and understood by people who had spent decades working in some different direction. Read more
April 9, 2005
From: Interview by Andres Hax, ClarÃn
How do you see the future of the human race? Will the implications of the Principle of Computational Equivalence, if recognized and adopted, alter the evolution of the human race? If so, how and how soon?
There’s going to be more and more coupling between computers and humans. More and more of our activities—including cognitive ones—will be successfully “outsourced” to computers. Then there’ll be questions about what’s essentially different between computers and humans. And the Principle of Computational Equivalence says there will never be anything fundamentally different. Read more
July 1, 2008
From: Interview by Luciano Floridi, Philosophy of Computing and Information: 5 Questions
What are the most important open problems concerning computation and/or information, and what are the prospects for progress?
There’s a lot still to discover about the computational universe. It’s like many past explorations&mdash’whether of the flora and fauna of Earth, of the chemicals that can be created or of the diversity of astronomical objects. We’ve learned enough to be able to do some basic classification, and we’ve been able to guess at some general principles. Read more
November 12, 2008
From: Interview by Carlos Gershenson, Complexity: 5 Questions
How do you see the future of complexity (including obstacles, dangers, promises and relations with other areas)?
It’s already underway… but in the years and decades to come we’re going to see a fundamental change in the approach to both science and technology. We’re going to see much simpler underlying systems and rules, with much more complex behavior, all over the place.
Sometimes we’re going to see “off-the-shelf” Read more
August 31, 2009
From: Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, CrazyEngineers
How do you think dependence on computers will affect us in the future?
Throughout human history, progress has tended to be about automating more and more things, so we as humans don’t have to do them ourselves. Computers are an important new step in this direction. So far we’ve only seen the very beginning of what they’ll let us do. Broad access to computable knowledge is going to be pretty important. Read more
August 31, 2009
From: Interview by Kaustubh Katdare, CrazyEngineers
What kind of problems can we attempt to solve in the future using Mathematica?
Anything that can be made computational! There’s a huge knowledgebase of algorithms and data now in Mathematica. And the symbolic programming paradigm that underlies Mathematica has turned out to be incredibly general and powerful. It’s really fun for me to see how incredibly productive people who know Mathematica well can be. Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
Is there any validity in the talk about the Singularity and Transhumanism?
Transhumanism: yes. Singularity: depends what one means. I don’t think it’s going to be a dramatic moment; more a process.
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
Will we ever formulate the Grand Unified Field Theory, or will it always be a mystery to us?
It’s hard to know for sure… but my guess is that we will find an easy-to-describe theory of physics. It might even happen soon. I’m guessing we have the science and technology needed to do it. Now it’s just a question of deciding it’s possible, and putting all the effort in…
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
Do you have any sci-fi type ideas that you really think are achievable within your lifetime? Faster-than-light travel, meeting extraterrestrial intelligent life, things of that sort.
Well… some things may actually be impossible… and I even wrote an essay about that a little while ago: https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/fqxi09/
Some things may happen gradually; others may be the result of a sudden discovery.
I’m guessing “AI” (with some footnotes about what it means) will happen gradually, as will the merger of humans with machines. Read more
May 14, 2012
From: Reddit AMA
What will be the most promising topics of research in computational science in the near future?
There are lots. Including many based on NKS… some of which I touched on in a blog post I did today: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/05/looking-to-the-future-of-a-new-kind-of-science/
It’d be fun to make an organized list, though. Perhaps something for our annual summer school https://education.wolfram.com/summer/school/ Read more
April 26, 2013
From: Interview by Patrick Tucker, IEET
Given the future of digitized knowledge, the exponential growth in structured and unstructured data that we can look forward to over the coming decades, is it possible that the space of irreducible knowledge, of unpredictable knowledge—while it will still always exist—is shrinking? Would this mean that the space of predictable knowledge is in fact growing?
Interesting question. Once we know enough, will we just be able to predict everything? In Wolfram|Alpha, for example, we know how to compute lots of things that you might have imagined weren’t predictable. You have a tree in your backyard. It’s such and such a size right now. How big will it be in 10 years? Read more
April 26, 2013
From: Interview by Patrick Tucker, IEET
Where do you see yourself in 10 years? And what do you see yourself having accomplished 10 years from now?
Well, that’s an interesting question. My gosh. That’s the kind of question one’s supposed to ask at a job interview. I never ask those, because I always figure that they’re silly questions. I’m hoping I’ll do a few new things. We’ll see. For the last decade, Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha were my main activities. Read more
April 26, 2013
From: Interview by Patrick Tucker, IEET
Your seminal book, A New Kind of Science, is ten years old. You recently wrote a blog post on the anniversary. Can you talk a little bit about the future of science?
The main idea of A New Kind of Science was to introduce a new way to model things in the world. Three hundred years ago, there was this big transformation in science when it was realized that one could use math, and the formal structure of math, to talk about the natural world. Read more
July 27, 2015
From: Interview by Byron Reese, Gigaom
How many years away, in your mind, are we from AI/robot rights becoming a mainstream topic? Is this a decade, or 25 years, or …?
I think more like a decade. Look, there’s going to be skirmish issues that come up more immediately. The issues that come up more immediately are, “Are AIs responsible?” That is, if your self-driving car’s AI glitches in some way, who is really responsible for that? That’s going to be a pretty near-term issue. Read more
February 23, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
What are your thoughts about the singularity?
I think different people mean different things by it. (Long ago I met I. J. Good, who I believe invented the term “intelligence explosion”… but we mostly talked about biological not technological evolution…) Gosh, there’s a lot to say about this. My Principle of Computational Equivalence implies that “intelligence” exists in lots of things, Read more
July 20, 2016
From: Reddit AMA
How realistic do you think it is for data science as a career to become obsolete due to automation in the next twenty years?
What’ll always be important is figuring out what questions one cares about. One of the things we’re doing with the Wolfram Language is to automate a very broad range of the actual operations one needs to do in data science. Oh, and we already have lots of machine learning capabilities for pulling out “interesting things”…
November 21, 2016
From: Interview by Sarah Lewin, Space.com
Is there any concept you invented for the movie Arrival that you’re thinking about exploring more?
[One] thing that I did think about for this movie is the following question: Is there an infinite frontier of technology? If we know the fundamental theory of physics, are we done, or is there always more to discover? What you realize is it’s very similar to the problem of axioms in mathematics and how math is hard, Read more
March 8, 2017
From: Interview by John Horgan, Scientific American
What’s the ultimate purpose of the Wolfram Language? Can it fulfill Leibniz’s dream of a language that can help us resolve all questions, moral as well as scientific? Can it provide a means of unambiguous communication between all intelligent entities, whether biological or artificial?
My goal with the Wolfram Language is to have a language in which computations can conveniently be expressed for both humans and machines—and in which we’ve integrated as much knowledge about computation and about the world as possible. In a way, the Wolfram Language is aimed at finally achieving some of the goals Leibniz had 300 years ago. Read more
March 8, 2017
From: Interview by John Horgan, Scientific American
Are autonomous machines, capable of choosing their own goals, inevitable? Is there anything we humans do that cannot—or should not—be automated?
When we see a rock fall, we could say either that it’s following a law of motion that makes it fall, or that it’s achieving the “goal” of being in a lower-potential-energy state. When machines—or for that matter, brains—operate, we can describe them either as just following their rules, or as “achieving certain goals”. Read more
March 8, 2017
From: Interview by John Horgan, Scientific American
What’s your utopia?
If you mean: what do I personally want to do all day? Well, I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to set up my life to let me spend a large fraction of my time doing what I want to be doing, which usually means creating things and figuring things out. Read more
April 3, 2018
From: Interview by Harrison Tasoff, Space.com
Works of science fiction make many predictions. What differentiates the things that won’t happen from those that haven’t happened yet?
In the course of my life, for example, probably the thing that has most dramatically changed is computers. And what’s perhaps interesting about that is there are many things that happened as a result that were not readily predictable.
There are details [in the movie] like the fact that they don’t have the idea of multiple windows. Read more
April 3, 2018
From: Interview by Harrison Tasoff, Space.com
Given the differences between this wave of space enthusiasm and that of the Cold War, do you think we’ll see things more like the space travel depicted in 2001: A Space Odyssey?
I think the answer is yes. When we’ll see that, I don’t know.
I don’t know what will cause the everyday person to really experience space. Other than that they see cool pictures sent back from a spacecraft. I think that space today is definitely a spirit of adventure-type activity, as much as anything. Read more
May 14, 2018
From: Interview by Lara Crigger, ETF.com
What sort of applications could smart contracts have in the financial markets?
In the world of finance, it’s already happened a bit. For the last, I don’t know, 30 years, options [contracts] have been expressed in essentially an algorithmic way.
But mortgages haven’t. So, if you take this multipage mortgage document and express it in computable form, then you can take 10,000 and do systematic analysis on them. Read more
May 29, 2018
From: Interview by Byron Reese, Gigaom.com
What do you think the future is going to be like, in 10 years, 20, 50, 100?
What we will see is an increasing mirror on human condition, so to speak. That is, what we are building are things that essentially amplify any aspect of the human condition. Then it, sort of, reflects back on us. What do we want? What are the goals that we want to have achieved? Read more
March 4, 2019
From: Reddit AMA
Do you see working from home to be a more common and expected thing in the future?
I have to say that I’ve been “working from home” for most of my working life (i.e. 40+ years). I’ve had some fine offices to go to, but somehow I always end up reverting to working at home. It’s not that I don’t like people, but somehow I find I’m more productive at home. Read more
March 4, 2019
From: Reddit AMA
Do you think there will ever be a treatment for math disorders such as Dyscalculia, and how do you think software may be able to assist this effort?
When I was a kid I used to claim I was “math challenged” (well, I used different words because I spoke British English then). That was why I started building computer tools to help me … and eventually built Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, etc.!
Even before I’d built those tools, I was using computers to do math … Read more
March 4, 2019
From: Reddit AMA
About mobile technology, do you think that smartphones will suppress desktop computing? What is the future of mobile vs desktop computing in business? What do you think about programming in mobile in the future?
For myself, I really like having a keyboard that I can type fast on. Our Wolfram Cloud app runs fine on a smartphone, and lets you bring up a notebook and do programming. In a few emergency situations I’ve used this, and it’s worked better than I expected. But I can’t see myself forsaking a keyboard for serious work. Read more
July 24, 2019
From: Interview by Will Carey, Creative Chair
Theoretically, would 3D printing ever be possible on a molecular level?
I think so. Something like this was an early objective of nanotechnology, but it was considered too difficult, and largely abandoned. Traditional synthetic chemistry tries to build molecules by applying a sequence of reactions that effectively transform the molecule. I have long thought there should be a direct way to build any molecule that’s stable. Read more
November 4, 2019
From: Interview by Margaret Harris, Physics World
What role do you think computation will play in the future of physics?
Physics was early in using computers to aid in working with its existing paradigms, and I would like to think that Mathematica helped with that. The biggest growth directions, I think, will be in the use of computation as a paradigm for physics. Part of this involves using computational models for physical systems. Read more
December 6, 2019
From: Interview by Jeff D’Alessio, The News-Gazette (unpublished)
What’s the next big thing in your line of work?
Putting computational intelligence into everything. That’s the path I’ve been on for many decades, and it’s exciting to see it coming to fruition. Personally, I also I happen to have recently made a bit of a breakthrough in a fundamental science project I’ve been interested in for 40+ years, which just might lead to something rather spectacular….
December 18, 2019
From: Interview by Guy Kawasaki, Remarkable People Podcast
What do you want your legacy to be?
I don’t know. It’s an interesting question. Now that I’m getting old, I’m supposed to think about questions like that.
There are things that I’ve done… particularly, understanding the computational universe, building this computational language. These are things that, if nothing dreadfully derails, I think I can confidently say that both of these things will end up being of long-term importance. Read more