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Post-Googleism At IBM With Piquant

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the find-the-prettiest-girl-in-new-jersey dept.

kamesh writes "James Fallows of the New York Times reports an interesting search technology that IBM is developing. IBM demonstrated a system called Piquant, which analyzed the semantic structure of a passage and therefore exposed 'knowledge' that wasn't explicitly there. After scanning a news article about Canadian politics, the system responded correctly to the question, 'Who is Canada's prime minister?' even though those exact words didn't appear in the article. What do you think?"

3 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds impressive by Timesprout · · Score: 4, Funny

    Till you realise the computer answered 'some asshole' which could be any prime minister in the world really.

    --
    Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
    What truth?
    There is no dupe
  2. Canadian Prime Minister by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I for one congratulate Canadian Prime Minister Tim Horton for running a great campaign and his wife Wendy for her fantastic chain of restaurants!

  3. Re:Prolly a hand-picked question by Quixote · · Score: 4, Funny
    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
    -- Andy Finkel, computer guy

    Or, conversely,

    Any sufficiently rigged demo is indistinguishable from an advanced technology.
    -- Don Quixote, slashdot guy

    ;-)