Sounds like you're thinking of the visualized datasets in http://www.gapminder.org/ http://www.gapminder.org/ and the TED talk http://www.ted.com/index.php/talk

Sounds like you're thinking of the visualized datasets in http://www.gapminder.org/ http://www.gapminder.org/ and the TED talk http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_be... WA seems like a generalization of that. Instead of seeing it as a google-killing AI inference engine, you're saying to think of it as a way to do effortlessly what you could do already... if you went to the trouble to gather the data, put it into mathematica or similar analysis tool. This is a very credible claim, and I can imagine it quickly finding unforeseen uses, as you say - provided it really is reasonably effortless (as in your four criteria).