5 ms·

Wolfram Alpha Demo by Stephen Wolfram [screencast]

74 points by mlLK 17y ago

mlLK 17y ago
This ain't no search engine. It's something else altogether.
- pedalpete 17y ago
  The way it is understanding and interpreting the queries I find amazing. Seems like a big step in AI (to the public at least). The results are equally interesting, i hope it can live up to the hype.
- defen 17y ago
  What if we call it a New Kind of Search Engine?
- jimbokun 17y ago
  Yes, it is a computational knowledge engine. :) Which I think is a pretty good label, actually. It is taking all the kind of information found in the big reference books in your library (atlases, dictionaries, science reference, etc.) and making it searchable through queries and inferences and calculations. I agree that the people comparing it to Google are off the mark. This demo does not compare it to Google in any way. I like at the end they show a page with the kinds of things Alpha knows about. It would be very frustrating trying to guess what it knows or not by typing in random queries.
abossy 17y ago
Repeat post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607532 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607532
brown9-2 17y ago
Is it a bad sign for Wolfram if the screencast shows me "Loading Controls: NaN%" in Chrome?
- rmp 17y ago
  Happened to me too in FF, just give it a sec.
- judofyr 17y ago
  I think it's a joke.
- fizx 17y ago
  I'd be surprised if they wrote the media player they're using for the screencast.
swombat 17y ago
This video is insane. If Alpha can do the stuff in this video, it's a revolutionary upgrade to human thought. I don't think I'm exaggerating. Making this available to the world for free will probably make as much of a difference to human thought and progress as Google has, if not more.
- lallysingh 17y ago
  Needs an iPhone version though. One little ad on the bottom and they'd make a killing in bar debates. Well, at least bar debates involving drunk nerds...
  - icey 17y ago
    Isn't it just a website?
    - lallysingh 17y ago
      It's still 320x240 screen, and that site looks pretty heavy on things that take a long time to render.
- Femur 17y ago
  Absolutely. As I watched this, i was thinking to myself how awesome it would be to always have this at my fingertips.
  - nsrivast 17y ago
    Still, I'd like 90 seconds playing with some non-tested queries before I decide how valuable it is.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  My worry is that this stuff was cherry-picked. Also, like Google (at least at first), this is going to be most useful to the people who think like the creators. I remember when Google appeared, some people (me, f'r instance) were able to get great results nearly every time, and other people seemed not to get the results they were looking for even after repeated attempts to refine the search. This effect lessened after a while, but Wolfram Alpha appears to have it in spades. I mean, "What is the GDP of France / Italy" clearly means to display a comparison of the GDPs of France and Italy, not to do some division producing a result that doesn't seem to have any relevance to anything... :)
zandorg 17y ago
This is incredible if it's built on New Kind of Science (game of life, etc - see Hackers by Steven Levy), but if it's just entered by hand, then it's merely useful. One thing I can forgive is that you have to learn what you can do, you can't just sit down and use it. You need to read the manual. I also totally dug his English accent, except for the term 'math' which show's he's mostly American. ;-)
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
asciilifeform 17y ago
To my fellow beta-testers (I'm sure some of you are here): have any of you found an actual productive use for Alpha? Scratch that, has anyone here used it "in anger", even once? I've been trying, so far, to no avail. (I have a copy of Mathematica, so use cases which intersect with that app's existing features are not of interest to me.)
- rjurney 17y ago
  I'm not a beta user, but offhand I would use it in my daily research to compare nations and economies, fact check articles on the economy, weather, etc. To contextualize, compare and analyze random factoids I come across daily but don't really understand. Does it not actually work well for that?
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
This is incredible. What I'd really like to see is something like this hooked up to a top quality voice recognition system and voice synthesis. So when I'm driving, or walking down the street, or working at my whiteboard, or whatever, I can answer those dumb little questions that always pop into my head.

74 points by mlLK 17y ago

mlLK 17y ago

This ain't no search engine. It's something else altogether.

pedalpete 17y ago
The way it is understanding and interpreting the queries I find amazing. Seems like a big step in AI (to the public at least). The results are equally interesting, i hope it can live up to the hype.
defen 17y ago
What if we call it a New Kind of Search Engine?
jimbokun 17y ago
Yes, it is a computational knowledge engine. :) Which I think is a pretty good label, actually. It is taking all the kind of information found in the big reference books in your library (atlases, dictionaries, science reference, etc.) and making it searchable through queries and inferences and calculations. I agree that the people comparing it to Google are off the mark. This demo does not compare it to Google in any way. I like at the end they show a page with the kinds of things Alpha knows about. It would be very frustrating trying to guess what it knows or not by typing in random queries.

abossy 17y ago

Repeat post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607532 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607532

brown9-2 17y ago

Is it a bad sign for Wolfram if the screencast shows me "Loading Controls: NaN%" in Chrome?

rmp 17y ago
Happened to me too in FF, just give it a sec.
judofyr 17y ago
I think it's a joke.
fizx 17y ago
I'd be surprised if they wrote the media player they're using for the screencast.

swombat 17y ago

This video is insane. If Alpha can do the stuff in this video, it's a revolutionary upgrade to human thought. I don't think I'm exaggerating. Making this available to the world for free will probably make as much of a difference to human thought and progress as Google has, if not more.

lallysingh 17y ago
Needs an iPhone version though. One little ad on the bottom and they'd make a killing in bar debates. Well, at least bar debates involving drunk nerds...
- icey 17y ago
  Isn't it just a website?
  - lallysingh 17y ago
    It's still 320x240 screen, and that site looks pretty heavy on things that take a long time to render.
Femur 17y ago
Absolutely. As I watched this, i was thinking to myself how awesome it would be to always have this at my fingertips.
- nsrivast 17y ago
  Still, I'd like 90 seconds playing with some non-tested queries before I decide how valuable it is.
randallsquared 17y ago
My worry is that this stuff was cherry-picked. Also, like Google (at least at first), this is going to be most useful to the people who think like the creators. I remember when Google appeared, some people (me, f'r instance) were able to get great results nearly every time, and other people seemed not to get the results they were looking for even after repeated attempts to refine the search. This effect lessened after a while, but Wolfram Alpha appears to have it in spades. I mean, "What is the GDP of France / Italy" clearly means to display a comparison of the GDPs of France and Italy, not to do some division producing a result that doesn't seem to have any relevance to anything... :)

zandorg 17y ago

This is incredible if it's built on New Kind of Science (game of life, etc - see Hackers by Steven Levy), but if it's just entered by hand, then it's merely useful. One thing I can forgive is that you have to learn what you can do, you can't just sit down and use it. You need to read the manual. I also totally dug his English accent, except for the term 'math' which show's he's mostly American. ;-)

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

asciilifeform 17y ago

To my fellow beta-testers (I'm sure some of you are here): have any of you found an actual productive use for Alpha? Scratch that, has anyone here used it "in anger", even once? I've been trying, so far, to no avail. (I have a copy of Mathematica, so use cases which intersect with that app's existing features are not of interest to me.)

rjurney 17y ago
I'm not a beta user, but offhand I would use it in my daily research to compare nations and economies, fact check articles on the economy, weather, etc. To contextualize, compare and analyze random factoids I come across daily but don't really understand. Does it not actually work well for that?

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

This is incredible. What I'd really like to see is something like this hooked up to a top quality voice recognition system and voice synthesis. So when I'm driving, or walking down the street, or working at my whiteboard, or whatever, I can answer those dumb little questions that always pop into my head.