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Stephen Wolfram Writings

Stephen Wolfram...
Instant Plugins for ChatGPT: Introducing the Wolfram ChatGPT Plugin Kit This is the first in a series of posts about new LLM-related technology associated with the...
a year ago
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a year ago
This is the first in a series of posts about new LLM-related technology associated with the Wolfram technology stack. "Color" with something like: When you set up a plugin, it can contain many endpoints, that do different things. And—in addition to sharing prompts—one reason this...
Stephen Wolfram...
Five Most Productive Years: What Happened and What’s Next So… What Happened? Today is my birthday—for the 65th time. Five years ago, on my 60th birthday, I...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
So… What Happened? Today is my birthday—for the 65th time. Five years ago, on my 60th birthday, I did a livestream where I talked about some of my plans. So… what happened? Well, what happened was great. And in fact I’ve just had the most productive five years of my life. Nine...
Stephen Wolfram...
Ruliology of the “Forgotten” Code 10 My All-Time Favorite Science Discovery June 1, 1984—forty years ago today—is when it would be fair...
8 months ago
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8 months ago
My All-Time Favorite Science Discovery June 1, 1984—forty years ago today—is when it would be fair to say I made my all-time favorite science discovery. Like with basically all significant science discoveries (despite the way histories often present them) it didn’t happen without...
Stephen Wolfram...
Remembering Doug Lenat (1950–2023) and His Quest to Capture the World with Logic Logic, Math and AI In many ways the great quest of Doug Lenat’s life was an attempt to follow on...
a year ago
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a year ago
Logic, Math and AI In many ways the great quest of Doug Lenat’s life was an attempt to follow on directly from the work of Aristotle and Leibniz. For what Doug was fundamentally trying to do over the forty years he spent developing his CYC system was to use the framework of...
Stephen Wolfram...
Useful to the Point of Being Revolutionary: Introducing Wolfram Notebook Assistant Note: As of today, copies of Wolfram Version 14.1 are being auto-updated to allow subscription...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
Note: As of today, copies of Wolfram Version 14.1 are being auto-updated to allow subscription access to the capabilities described here. [For additional installation information see here.] Just Say What You Want! Turning Words into Computation Nearly a year and a half ago—just a...
Stephen Wolfram...
On the Nature of Time The Computational View of Time Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
The Computational View of Time Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is it? In traditional scientific accounts it’s often represented as some kind of coordinate much like space (though a coordinate that for some reason is always systematically...
Stephen Wolfram...
Why Does Biological Evolution Work? A Minimal Model for Biological Evolution and Other Adaptive... The Model Why does biological evolution work? And, for that matter, why does machine learning work?...
9 months ago
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9 months ago
The Model Why does biological evolution work? And, for that matter, why does machine learning work? Both are examples of adaptive processes that surprise us with what they manage to achieve. So what’s the essence of what’s going on? I’m going to concentrate here on biological...
Stephen Wolfram...
Expression Evaluation and Fundamental Physics
a year ago
Stephen Wolfram...
ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”! See also: “What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?” » To enable the functionality described...
a year ago
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a year ago
See also: “What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?” » To enable the functionality described here, select and install the Wolfram plugin from within ChatGPT. Note that this capability is so far available only to some ChatGPT Plus users; for more information, see...
Stephen Wolfram...
Nestedly Recursive Functions Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely...
4 months ago
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4 months ago
Yet Another Ruliological Surprise Integers. Addition. Subtraction. Maybe multiplication. Surely that’s not enough to be able to generate any serious complexity. In the early 1980s I had made the very surprising discovery that very simple programs based on cellular automata could...
Stephen Wolfram...
Who Can Understand the Proof? A Window on Formalized Mathematics Related writings: “Logic, Explainability and the Future of Understanding” (2018) » “The...
a month ago
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a month ago
Related writings: “Logic, Explainability and the Future of Understanding” (2018) » “The Physicalization of Metamathematics and Its Implications for the Foundations of Mathematics” (2022) » “Computational Knowledge and the Future of Pure Mathematics” (2014) » The Simplest Axiom...
Stephen Wolfram...
Foundations of Biological Evolution: More Results & More Surprises This is a follow-on to Why Does Biological Evolution Work? A Minimal Model for Biological Evolution...
2 months ago
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2 months ago
This is a follow-on to Why Does Biological Evolution Work? A Minimal Model for Biological Evolution and Other Adaptive Processes [May 3, 2024]. Even More from an Extremely Simple Model A few months ago I introduced an extremely simple “adaptive cellular automaton” model that...
Stephen Wolfram...
Introducing Chat Notebooks: Integrating LLMs into the Notebook Paradigm This is part of an ongoing series about our LLM technology:ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram...
a year ago
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a year ago
This is part of an ongoing series about our LLM technology:ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”!Instant Plugins for ChatGPT: Introducing the Wolfram ChatGPT Plugin KitThe New World of LLM Functions: Integrating LLM Technology into the Wolfram LanguagePrompts for Work & Play:...
Stephen Wolfram...
When Exactly Will the Eclipse Happen? A Multimillennium Tale of Computation Updated and expanded from a post for the eclipse of August 21, 2017. Preparing for April 8, 2024 On...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Updated and expanded from a post for the eclipse of August 21, 2017. Preparing for April 8, 2024 On April 8, 2024, there’s going to be a total eclipse of the Sun visible on a line across the US. But when exactly will the eclipse occur at a given location? Being able to predict...
Stephen Wolfram...
The New World of LLM Functions: Integrating LLM Technology into the Wolfram Language This is part of a series about our LLM technology.Other parts of this series: ChatGPT Gets Its...
a year ago
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a year ago
This is part of a series about our LLM technology.Other parts of this series: ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”!Instant Plugins for ChatGPT: Introducing the Wolfram ChatGPT Plugin Kit Turning LLM Capabilities into Functions So far, we mostly think of LLMs as things we...
Stephen Wolfram...
Yet More New Ideas and New Functions: Launching Version 14.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica For the 36th Time… the Latest from Our R&D Pipeline There’s Now a Unified Wolfram App Vector...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
For the 36th Time… the Latest from Our R&D Pipeline There’s Now a Unified Wolfram App Vector Databases and Semantic Search RAGs and Dynamic Prompting for LLMs Connect to Your Favorite LLM Symbolic Arrays and Their Calculus Binomials and Pitchforks: Navigating Mathematical...
Stephen Wolfram...
What’s Really Going On in Machine Learning? Some Minimal Models The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
The Mystery of Machine Learning It’s surprising how little is known about the foundations of machine learning. Yes, from an engineering point of view, an immense amount has been figured out about how to build neural nets that do all kinds of impressive and sometimes almost...
Stephen Wolfram...
Can AI Solve Science? Note: Click any diagram to get Wolfram Language code to reproduce it. Wolfram Language code for...
11 months ago
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11 months ago
Note: Click any diagram to get Wolfram Language code to reproduce it. Wolfram Language code for training the neural nets used here is also available (requires GPU). Won’t AI Eventually Be Able to Do Everything? Particularly given its recent surprise successes, there’s a somewhat...
Stephen Wolfram...
LLM Tech and a Lot More: Version 13.3 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica The Leading Edge of 2023 Technology … and Beyond Today we’re launching Version 13.3 of Wolfram...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Leading Edge of 2023 Technology … and Beyond Today we’re launching Version 13.3 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica—both available immediately on desktop and cloud. It’s only been 196 days since we released Version 13.2, but there’s a lot that’s new, not least a whole...
Stephen Wolfram...
Computing the Eclipse: Astronomy in the Wolfram Language Basic Eclipse Computation It’s taken millennia to get to the point where it’s possible to accurately...
10 months ago
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10 months ago
Basic Eclipse Computation It’s taken millennia to get to the point where it’s possible to accurately compute eclipses. But now—as a tiny part of making “everything in the world” computable—computation about eclipses is just a built-in feature of the Wolfram Language. The core...
Stephen Wolfram...
Observer Theory The Concept of the Observer We call it perception. We call it measurement. We call it analysis. But...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Concept of the Observer We call it perception. We call it measurement. We call it analysis. But in the end it’s about how we take the world as it is, and derive from it the impression of it that we have in our minds. We might have thought that we could do science “purely […]
Stephen Wolfram...
Prompts for Work & Play: Launching the Wolfram Prompt Repository This is part of an ongoing series about our LLM technology:ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram...
a year ago
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a year ago
This is part of an ongoing series about our LLM technology:ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”!Instant Plugins for ChatGPT: Introducing the Wolfram ChatGPT Plugin KitThe New World of LLM Functions: Integrating LLM Technology into the Wolfram LanguagePrompts for Work & Play:...
Stephen Wolfram...
Aggregation and Tiling as Multicomputational Processes The Importance of Multiway Systems It’s all about systems where there can in effect be many possible...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Importance of Multiway Systems It’s all about systems where there can in effect be many possible paths of history. In a typical standard computational system like a cellular automaton, there’s always just one path, defined by evolution from one state to the next. But in a...
Stephen Wolfram...
How Did We Get Here? The Tangled History of the Second Law of Thermodynamics This is part 3 in a 3-part series about the Second Law: 1. Computational Foundations for the Second...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
This is part 3 in a 3-part series about the Second Law: 1. Computational Foundations for the Second Law of Thermodynamics (forthcoming) 2. A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of Thermodynamics (forthcoming) 3. How Did We Get Here? The Tangled History of the...
Stephen Wolfram...
Computational Foundations for the Second Law of Thermodynamics This is part 1 in a 3-part series about the Second Law: 1. Computational Foundations for the Second...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
This is part 1 in a 3-part series about the Second Law: 1. Computational Foundations for the Second Law of Thermodynamics 2. A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of Thermodynamics 3. How Did We Get Here? The Tangled History of the Second Law of Thermodynamics...
Stephen Wolfram...
How to Think Computationally about AI, The Universe and Everything Transcript of a talk at TED AI on October 17, 2023, in San Francisco Human language. Mathematics....
a year ago
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a year ago
Transcript of a talk at TED AI on October 17, 2023, in San Francisco Human language. Mathematics. Logic. These are all ways to formalize the world. And in our century there’s a new and yet more powerful one: computation. And for nearly 50 years I’ve had the great privilege of...
Stephen Wolfram...
The Story Continues: Announcing Version 14 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica Version 14.0 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica is available immediately both on the desktop and in...
a year ago
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a year ago
Version 14.0 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica is available immediately both on the desktop and in the cloud. See also more detailed information on Version 13.1, Version 13.2 and Version 13.3. Building Something Greater and Greater… for 35 Years and Counting Today we celebrate...
Stephen Wolfram...
What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work? See also: “Wolfram|Alpha as the Way to Bring Computational Knowledge Superpowers to ChatGPT” » It’s...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
See also: “Wolfram|Alpha as the Way to Bring Computational Knowledge Superpowers to ChatGPT” » It’s Just Adding One Word at a Time That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially like human-written text is remarkable, and unexpected. But how does...
Stephen Wolfram...
A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of Thermodynamics This is part 2 in a 3-part series about the Second Law: 1. Computational Foundations for the Second...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
This is part 2 in a 3-part series about the Second Law: 1. Computational Foundations for the Second Law of Thermodynamics (forthcoming) 2. A 50-Year Quest: My Personal Journey with the Second Law of Thermodynamics 3. How Did We Get Here? The Tangled History of the Second Law of...
Stephen Wolfram...
Will AIs Take All Our Jobs and End Human History—or Not? Well, It’s Complicated… The Shock of ChatGPT Just a few months ago writing an original essay seemed like something only a...
a year ago
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a year ago
The Shock of ChatGPT Just a few months ago writing an original essay seemed like something only a human could do. But then ChatGPT burst onto the scene. And suddenly we realized that an AI could write a passable human-like essay. So now it’s natural to wonder: How far will this...
Stephen Wolfram...
Launching Version 14.2 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica: Big Data Meets Computation & AI The Drumbeat of Releases Continues… Notebook Assistant Chat inside Any Notebook Bring Us Your...
4 weeks ago
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4 weeks ago
The Drumbeat of Releases Continues… Notebook Assistant Chat inside Any Notebook Bring Us Your Gigabytes! Introducing Tabular Manipulating Data in Tabular Getting Data into Tabular Cleaning Data for Tabular The Structure of Tabular Tabular Everywhere Algebra with Symbolic Arrays...
Stephen Wolfram...
Generative AI Space and the Mental Imagery of Alien Minds AIs and Alien Minds How do alien minds perceive the world? It’s an old and oft-debated question in...
a year ago
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a year ago
AIs and Alien Minds How do alien minds perceive the world? It’s an old and oft-debated question in philosophy. And it now turns out to also be a question that rises to prominence in connection with the concept of the ruliad that’s emerged from our Wolfram Physics Project. I’ve...
Stephen Wolfram...
Wolfram|Alpha as the Way to Bring Computational Knowledge Superpowers to ChatGPT ChatGPT and Wolfram|Alpha It’s always amazing when things suddenly “just work”. It happened to us...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
ChatGPT and Wolfram|Alpha It’s always amazing when things suddenly “just work”. It happened to us with Wolfram|Alpha back in 2009. It happened with our Physics Project in 2020. And it’s happening now with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. I’ve been tracking neural net technology for a long time...
Stephen Wolfram...
The Latest from Our R&D Pipeline: Version 13.2 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica Delivering from Our R&D Pipeline In 2020 it was Versions 12.1 and 12.2; in 2021 Versions 12.3 and...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Delivering from Our R&D Pipeline In 2020 it was Versions 12.1 and 12.2; in 2021 Versions 12.3 and 13.0. In late June this year it was Version 13.1. And now we’re releasing Version 13.2. We continue to have a huge pipeline of R&D, some short term, some medium term, some long term...
Stephen Wolfram...
Games and Puzzles as Multicomputational Systems
over a year ago
Stephen Wolfram...
The Physicalization of Metamathematics and Its Implications for the Foundations of Mathematics h2 span {color: #a5a5a5;} table.InCell { margin-left: -0.27rem; } #blog .post_content...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
h2 span {color: #a5a5a5;} table.InCell { margin-left: -0.27rem; } #blog .post_content .inline-table-of-contents { background-color: #ebf9f8; border: solid 1px #89cac7; } #blog .post_content .inline-table-of-contents div a { color: #783f19; } #blog...
Stephen Wolfram...
On the Concept of Motion How Is It That Things Can Move? It seems like the kind of question that might have been hotly...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
How Is It That Things Can Move? It seems like the kind of question that might have been hotly debated by ancient philosophers, but would have been settled long ago: how is it that things can move? And indeed with the view of physical space that’s been almost universally adopted...
Stephen Wolfram...
Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica 🙀🤠🥳 ::[ ] Threaded MapApply FeatureImpactPlot IntegrateChangeVariables ReconstructionMesh VideoCapture...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
::[ ] Threaded MapApply FeatureImpactPlot IntegrateChangeVariables ReconstructionMesh VideoCapture RootTree ImplicitD “ExprStruct” ChemicalConvert UniqueElements ReplaceAt TypeEvaluate TreeLeafCount QuestionSelector IncludeSingularSolutions KernelConfiguration PhongShading...
Stephen Wolfram...
Twenty Years Later: The Surprising Greater Implications of A New Kind of Science See also: “A New Kind of Science: A 15-Year View”. From the Foundations Laid by A New Kind of...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
See also: “A New Kind of Science: A 15-Year View”. From the Foundations Laid by A New Kind of Science When A New Kind of Science was published twenty years ago I thought what it had to say was important. But what’s become increasingly clear—particularly in the last few years—is...
Stephen Wolfram...
We’ve Got a Science Opportunity Overload: It’s Time to Launch the Wolfram Institute! Suddenly There’s Just So Much New Science to Do Something remarkable has happened these past two...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Suddenly There’s Just So Much New Science to Do Something remarkable has happened these past two years. For 45 years I’ve devoted myself to building a taller and taller tower of science and technology—which along the way has delivered many outputs of which I’m quite proud. But...
Stephen Wolfram...
Alien Intelligence and the Concept of Technology The Nature of Alien Intelligence “We’re going to launch lots of tiny spacecraft into interstellar...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
The Nature of Alien Intelligence “We’re going to launch lots of tiny spacecraft into interstellar space, have them discover alien intelligence, then bring back its technology to advance human technology by a million years”. I’ve heard some pretty wacky startup pitches over the...
Stephen Wolfram...
The Making of A New Kind of Science I Think I Should Write a Quick Book… In the end it’s about five and a half pounds of paper, 1280...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
I Think I Should Write a Quick Book… In the end it’s about five and a half pounds of paper, 1280 pages, 973 illustrations and 583,313 words. And its creation took more than a decade of my life. Almost every day of my thirties, and a little beyond, I tenaciously worked on it....
Stephen Wolfram...
Remembering the Improbable Life of Ed Fredkin (1934–2023) and His World of Ideas and Stories Programmer of the Universe “OK, so let me tell you…” And so it would begin. A long and colorful...
a year ago
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a year ago
Programmer of the Universe “OK, so let me tell you…” And so it would begin. A long and colorful story. An elaborate description of a wild idea. In the forty years I knew Ed Fredkin I heard countless wild ideas and colorful stories from him. He always radiated a certain...
Stephen Wolfram...
Towards a Computational Formalization for Foundations of Medicine A Theory of Medicine? As it’s practiced today, medicine is almost always about particulars: “this...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
A Theory of Medicine? As it’s practiced today, medicine is almost always about particulars: “this has gone wrong; this is how to fix it”. But might it also be possible to talk about medicine in a more general, more abstract way—and perhaps to create a framework in which one can...