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It can't handle non-numeric quantities like "average distance to moon" but Google's calculator has handled calculations with units very well for 15 years at lea

It can't handle non-numeric quantities like "average distance to moon" but Google's calculator has handled calculations with units very well for 15 years at least. It definitely puts Apple's Spotlight calculations to shame. I find that W|A works fine until it fails to parse my query and then I have no idea how to fix it, because the syntax is unclear.

7thaccount 3y ago
There should be some doc on the English syntax. I wonder if WA lets you fall back to the proper Mathematica representation. Something like the below but in reverse as WA typically does the free form by default I think. https://wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-8/free-form-linguistic-input/ https://wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-8/free-form-linguisti...
- rgovostes 3y ago
  You can input Mathematica (ahem, Wolfram Language). I suppose yet another use for LLMs: better translation of natural language input into structured Wolfram calculations. Unsurprisingly, they're already advertising "Wolfram GPT" and have added LLMSynthesize[] etc. to Mathematica.
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    I assume the translation is a bit more rigorous than running through an LLM.
    - rgovostes 3y ago
      Which is the problem: It is using natural language processing techniques that were state of the art in 2009, but have been completely eclipsed in the past couple of years. The "rigor" tends to be at odds with the fluidity of user input: typos, search query-ese, ambiguity, etc. The challenging problem that Wolfram|Alpha tries to solve is conversion of natural language queries to structured ones. Although I doubt Wolfram's parser has been completely static for a decade, the most recent generation of language models are vastly better at translating natural language queries to structured ones. See also: how terrible Siri is at everything.
      - pbronez 3y ago
        Ugh I can’t wait for Apple to roll out Siri II, re-baselined with contemporary LLM tech. So much of Siri’s architecture is exactly what I want… it’s just too dumb.

7thaccount 3y ago

There should be some doc on the English syntax. I wonder if WA lets you fall back to the proper Mathematica representation. Something like the below but in reverse as WA typically does the free form by default I think. https://wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-8/free-form-linguistic-input/ https://wolfram.com/mathematica/new-in-8/free-form-linguisti...

rgovostes 3y ago
You can input Mathematica (ahem, Wolfram Language). I suppose yet another use for LLMs: better translation of natural language input into structured Wolfram calculations. Unsurprisingly, they're already advertising "Wolfram GPT" and have added LLMSynthesize[] etc. to Mathematica.
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  I assume the translation is a bit more rigorous than running through an LLM.
  - rgovostes 3y ago
    Which is the problem: It is using natural language processing techniques that were state of the art in 2009, but have been completely eclipsed in the past couple of years. The "rigor" tends to be at odds with the fluidity of user input: typos, search query-ese, ambiguity, etc. The challenging problem that Wolfram|Alpha tries to solve is conversion of natural language queries to structured ones. Although I doubt Wolfram's parser has been completely static for a decade, the most recent generation of language models are vastly better at translating natural language queries to structured ones. See also: how terrible Siri is at everything.
    - pbronez 3y ago
      Ugh I can’t wait for Apple to roll out Siri II, re-baselined with contemporary LLM tech. So much of Siri’s architecture is exactly what I want… it’s just too dumb.