

Stephen Wolfram Speaks About His New Question Answering Engine - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2009/04/08/stephen-wolfram-speaks-about-his-new-question-answering-engine/

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anthonyrubin
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=549398>

~~~
ableal
That link is worth expanding (Rudy Rucker interview, also quoted source of
singularityhub piece): [http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-
search...](http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-
truth)

And in _that_ page, the tail 'Resource' links include this:
[http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.htm...](http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html)

which is the Jorge Luis Borges essay with the amusing mention of a system of
animal classification: "(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame
..."

Borges lucidly nails the Achilles' heel - the definition of the database
scheme. I stand by my less insightful comment of three weeks ago - care and
feeding of 'fact databases' is hard
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520281>)

------
TweedHeads
I know Wolfram Alpha is going to be great, no doubt about the genius behind
it. But the first time I heard of it, it was presented as a google killer
which gave it a bad reputation as overhyped and cuil-like image.

I like their new image. They do one thing and they do it like nobody else
before.

Kudos to Stephen Wolfram and his team.

