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Wolfram Alpha.. What is it?

Posted by codesucker • 5/23/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: wolfram

Something really cool happend recently in web history - wolfram alpha went up for public use.

What is this? English please.

It's a website that you can ASK A QUESTION TO and get a response.. no, not like ask jeeves. It's NOT a search engine. It's a growing collection of data harnessed by an artifical intelligence (not really, it's actually just an instance of a mathematica program)

For instance if you ask it
"Why did the chicken cross the road"
it breaks down your language and finds a response based on all the data its collected over 20 years. It calmly lets you know that it wants to get to the other side.. instead of throwing 100s of links at you like Jeeves did.

(OK the chicken joke was programmed in, not figured out on the fly - but it makes a good example)

Go ahead and ask it some questions. There is also an API for developers. Take a look at the right sidebar for some examples of input

www.wolframalpha.com/

User Comments

5/23/09

Friday13

I've beet trying it from time to time, asking all sorts of questions. Works well for most.

Let's hope it doesn't become a sentient entity and kills us all!

[reply]
1. 5/23/09
  
  codesucker
  
  mrbabyman had a podcast today, he talked about exactly that for a few minutes - a skynet scenario via wolfram
  
  I strongly believe it's not possible for wolfram to learn, but people are arguing me tooth and nail about this. The API only accepts queries too, so it's not like we can write new functions for it. I've only played with it a few days though, I half believe they are just pitching this mathematic programming language and making a big deal out of nothing.. but at the very least it does do integrals and all sorts of math really well, college students will be getting better grades on their homework
2. 5/23/09
  
  Friday13
  
  Yeah. Too bad I've already passed all my math classes in college. I could've used this three years ago! Evil Wolfram guys taking so long ...
5/23/09

rfburnhertz

I've been reading a lot about this in the past month or so.
Could be very cool.

[reply]
1. 5/23/09
  
  codesucker
  
  could you throw up some links, I've only been on this a few days
  
  what do you think of it's capabilities to learn?
5/23/09

elitethinker

Wolfram is a genious, though as every genious, he tends to preposterous :).

His invention is a bit overhyped but that shows he's also a Business Man (he owns Mathematica) and Marketing is as important as product today. And hope that will improve with time.

By the way, I had a past article on him
Stephen Wolfram talks about the incompleteness of Darwin Theory
www.elitethinker.com/2009/01/stephen-wolfram-talks-about.html

[reply]
5/23/09

wagerwitch

I think it will be interesting.

[reply]