Future of Science and Technology Q&A (January 17, 2025)

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: How would you think about approaching science in the future? Should we accept AI's role in future science or still pursue science without the help of AI? - What do you think the future of software development will be in the next decade or so? I hear very conflicting POVs from friends. - Thoughts on LLM use in academic writing (including student theses and dissertations)? - How many new languages do we see a year these days? It wasn't long ago when I was hearing about new languages every now and then... - ​​I'm using an LLM to help me through a book on thermodynamics right now. Nice to just throw misunderstandings at it. - LLMs can learn languages in a few hours. How would you think about making humans able to learn as fast? - ​Hypothetically speaking, if an AI system has access to all the images, cameras of the world, can it think through images, videos as if there is no language? Can it surpass human intelligence like that? - Interestingly, current AI models are very good at creating natural images of people, but it totally fails for electronic circuits. - How would you think about copyright, trademarks and other intellectual properties in the age of AI? - How do we know this is actually Stephen Wolfram? It could just be another Oracle trained in long answers.