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Wolfram Promises Computing That Answers Questions

Posted by timothy on from the he's-feeling-lucky-you-feel-lucky-too dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram feels that he has put together at least the initial version of a computer that actually answers factual questions, a la Star Trek's ship computers. His version will be found on their Web-based application, Wolfram Alpha. What does this mean? Well, instead of returning links to pages that may (or may not) contain the answer to your questions, Wolfram will respond with the actual answer. Just imagine typing in 'How many bones are in the human body?' and getting the answer." Right now, though the search entry field is in place, Alpha is not yet generally available -- only "to a few select individuals."

4 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. Computers are useless... by st0rmshad0w · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...they only give you answers.

  2. Re:Nope. by SirLurksAlot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It doesn't actually know anything.

    If you RTFA, you'll see that something entirely different is being discussed here. Alpha is supposed to actually answer the question because it knows a lot of facts, not because it's been programmed to look for certain phrases and respond with certain strings of text.

    Good points, but this is still just a different (better perhaps?) implementation of the same concept. The big issue with the implementation is that it will only "know" what you tell it, the same as any other computer. Further it will only be able to tell you about what you want to know based on the system's ability to parse your question and return what it "thinks" you want to know.

    Look, I'm not saying it isn't a cool idea, I'm just saying that it isn't as shiny and new as the creator would lead you to believe. I'm also not inclined to be impressed considering that it isn't even available to try yet. It hasn't even been released yet.

    --
    God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
  3. Re:Anyone remember AskJeeves? by Korin43 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Atomic mass of plutonium?
    Circumference of the earth?
    Number of horns on a unicorn?

    Google already does this. It's giving you the answer and linking to the page that has it. All Google needs is to be able to use these things in the calculator ("circumference of the earth in furlongs").

    Oh and related to your "rupees in a dollar". "1 dollar in indian rupees" will tell you.

  4. Re:Lojban by shawnap · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... these are the same people who believe that a computer can "think" about chess, instead of just searching through N number of plies in T time, then offering the best solution it has found in those constraints...

    Who says that this is insufficient for "thinking"?

    I think understanding the Chinese room paradox as having provided a solution to this question is a misinterpretation. The best thing to take away is that "thinking" is not well defined.