Stephen Wolfram Q&A

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Some collected questions and answers by Stephen Wolfram

Questions may be edited for brevity; see links for full questions.

February 6, 1998

From: Interview by David Stork, Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality

Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelligence out there?

Oh, I’m sure there are lots and lots of systems that can do computations as sophisticated as working out the digits of pi. We’ve got lots right here on Earth. But we don’t call them intelligent. Even though some of them seem to “have a mind of their own”—like the weather. But I also think there are probably lots of extraterrestrials out there of the kind you’re talking about—with lots of history, evolution stuff and so on.

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