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Interviews: Ask Stephen Wolfram a Question

Posted by samzenpus on from the go-ahead-and-ask dept.

Stephen Wolfram's accomplishments and contributions to science and computing are numerous. He earned a PhD in particle physics from Caltech at 20, and has been cited by over 30,000 research publications. Wolfram is the the author of A New Kind of Science, creator of Mathematica, the creator of Wolfram Alpha, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. He developed Wolfram Language, a general multi-paradigm programming language, in 2014. Stephen has graciously agreed to answer any questions you may have for him. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

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  1. Alpha not so great. by fortunatus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know this will hit my karma, but here goes..

    I'd ask Wolfram: Why do you say Alpha is so great. I understand it's hard. So then be clear about what it's good at. Why do you represent as if it's some all knowing AI when it goes to crap for any question that any self respecting SciFi fan would ask first?

    It does really, really well with the examples that Wolfram uses in his introductory video. I get great results when I ask a stock market question, sure. I also get great stock market analysis results from Yahoo, Google, and e*Trade. In response to every other question I ask it I get crap. It typically has little data on my areas of interest, so it seems to dumb down the parse on my question to make a search *for* crap. So then it returns crap. Charted in one or two ways.

    I want to ask things that would help me pilot a space ship, or at least help me understand NASA's proposals to the U.S. Congress. For instance, "How do I plot a course from earth to Uranus?" I just this moment typed that in, and guess what - complete crap. It returned a plot of x^2, and nary a mention of gravity or planets or time anything else. How did it manage to parse a question about a course from Earth to Uranus and decide x^2 was the best item to present?

    Look what it says about its parse of my question: "Using closest Wolfram|Alpha interpretation: how do I plot a". What? "How do I plot a"? I did type a subject, folks! It didn't even try to get to the planets, orbits, gravity, anything. IT DIDN'T EVEN TRY! I see that if there are no knowledge frames in the system pertaining to my query, it seems likely to chop down the input. I'm learning more about how Alpha is implemented than I am learning about my query!!

    Can't it at least show any historical paths that spacecraft have used between the planets? Can't it even show the planets? Can't it even cite procedural texts on how to do it? Can't it mention some of the factors that must be considered? I would like the result from an all-knowing AI to be an applet that shows a spaghetti line stretching out among the bodies of the solar system, and I would like to be able to adjust the launch date and see the planets move and see what happens to the spaghetti line.

    BTW, that little Game of Life CA that displays while I'm waiting for my answer. Ha ha. I guess that's so cool. I confess, it does make me feel that some really thoughtful process is going on, just what marketing wants. For all that, what comes back - crap. Just makes it all the more disappointing.