computational theorist

Even before Stephen Wolfram took the stage, he evoked the largest applause of the conference so far. As the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, and author of A New Kind of Science, Wolfram stands almost as tall as Kurzweil himself in the eyes of the audience. His pronouncements carry more weight than most of the conference's other speakers, which is why I felt relieved when Wolfram disregarded worry about our extinction at the hands of sentient robots, and instead focused on a very different concept of what role AI will play in our future.

Congratulations are in order for two alums of POPSCIs Brilliant 10-geophysicist Michael Manga (Brilliant 10 class of 2003) of the University of California at Berkeley and laser physicist Claire Gmachl (Brilliant 10 class of 2004) of Princeton University-each of whom was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" grant on September 20.