Doug Lenat – I was positively impressed with Wolfram Alpha(semanticuniverse.com)
semanticuniverse.com
Doug Lenat – I was positively impressed with Wolfram Alpha
http://www.semanticuniverse.com/blogs-i-was-positively-impressed-wolfram-alpha.html
17 comments
Google sort of has a preprocessor that does stuff like this. Probably not as much as Wolfram.
You can see it when you search Google for things like:
"What time is it in Las Vegas" (notice that it knows, and it also knows that you probably mean Las Vegas NV but might mean NM, and that Las Vegas NM is smaller)
"MSFT" (e.g. a ticker)
"Who is the president of France"
"16 USD in GBP"
From the stories, it SOUNDS like Wolfram can answer a lot more of these kinds of queries than Google, which makes me think that the best way to use a technology like this is to sell it to Google to plug in as their pre-search pre-processor to replace the simple ones they've already developed.
You can see it when you search Google for things like:
"What time is it in Las Vegas" (notice that it knows, and it also knows that you probably mean Las Vegas NV but might mean NM, and that Las Vegas NM is smaller)
"MSFT" (e.g. a ticker)
"Who is the president of France"
"16 USD in GBP"
From the stories, it SOUNDS like Wolfram can answer a lot more of these kinds of queries than Google, which makes me think that the best way to use a technology like this is to sell it to Google to plug in as their pre-search pre-processor to replace the simple ones they've already developed.
Thanks for this.
Lenat's probably the best-positioned guy out there to back-infer some of alpha's design and limitations from a two-hour demo; this is the most informative summary I've seen.
Lenat's probably the best-positioned guy out there to back-infer some of alpha's design and limitations from a two-hour demo; this is the most informative summary I've seen.
Yes, his description is more on-the-money and bs-free than the other one's I've seen, particularly in describing the computational architecture of the system.
I'll be quite honest: I'm sure that Wolfram has made something truly, honestly amazing and perhaps even beautiful...to a geek. Much like one artist can appreciate the time and dedication required by another artist in creating a complex work, to the lay person it's still just random splotches of color.
In fact, reading this review I'm reminded of the article about Git and merge algorithms that was on the front page recently. In all likelihood, Alpha will be amazing at what it does, without anyone worrying whether what it does is what people want. Maybe people like Google because it's fast and reasonably accurate, and the human brain is still a really amazing filter once you narrow down the data set sufficiently.
In fact, reading this review I'm reminded of the article about Git and merge algorithms that was on the front page recently. In all likelihood, Alpha will be amazing at what it does, without anyone worrying whether what it does is what people want. Maybe people like Google because it's fast and reasonably accurate, and the human brain is still a really amazing filter once you narrow down the data set sufficiently.
Would you trust any of the answers returned by such a system? Or would you double check them on Google?
I'd hope so. Every time you get on a plane you're trusting the answers returned by Mathematica :-)
Probably MATLAB instead of Mathematica. Control Systems, Communication Systems, Structural Engineering, Engines, Vibration Analysis,... all within MATLAB's domain, right? Am I missing something?
MATLAB certainly is the leader in the field, but Mathematica does finite element, control systems, etc.
Anyway, the point is, when it comes to being "trusted" there are a lot of software companies and products who Google doesn't really compare to.
Anyway, the point is, when it comes to being "trusted" there are a lot of software companies and products who Google doesn't really compare to.
As any other engineer, I have used MATLAB quite a lot. Unfortunately I am not as familiarized with Mathematica. I thought Mathematica was mostly symbolic computation. I didn't know it did numerical computation (such as FEM) as well. Thanks for the info!
If it's so impressive, then why does it need so much hype? Just release it already...
If this was your startup, would you be saying no to the publicity? There is such a thing as too much hype, but so far all I've seen is 1 blog post from wolfram, and 2 posts from people he showed it too. There is no need to begrudge the fact that its generating buzz. If it fails to live up to what the 'primary sources' are saying is another matter...
If this were another web2.0 startup, I would have no problem. But this is also research. It seems a bit strange to rave about a research project without letting people judge it for themselves.
Anyone else feeling like this could turn out to be another Cuil? I'm afraid it won't live up to the initial hype and then everyone will lose trust/interest in it.
I do hope it's everything it claims to be though.
I do hope it's everything it claims to be though.
After this I am really looking forward to the public release. Go alpha!
Btw, there is now Mathematic Home Edition for only $300, with the same capabilities of the normal one, with one limitation - it can't be used in commercial setting.
Where is the Eurisko source code, Dr. Lenat?
Did it ever even exist?
Did it ever even exist?
http://web.archive.org/web/20101024015555/http://www.semanti...