In fact what Wolfram and his team have done is, after a lot of research, broken down the problem (answering a fact-based question) into a series of small steps, each of which is reproducible and can be used for interpreting different types of question and finding the corresponding answers. Inside it has built-in models of how the world works in terms of science, geography, business, people and so on, and it interprets your question and uses its models to calculate an answer. Instead Alpha is supposedly revolutionary since it actually computes the answer for you. Wolfram is calling the technology a “computational knowledge engine” and it’s designed to answer questions like “What’s the 200th number in Pi?” and “What phase is the moon in right now?”īut apparently the system’s not like previous efforts at this technology (ahem, Ask Jeeves), which use natural language parsing to determine your question and then simply present the web-search results.
It’s called Wolfram Alpha, and it’s pretty much what you’re thinking about right now: A computer program that, like the computers from a science-fiction movie, answers with the right facts when you ask it–think Hal 9000, or even KITT from Knight Rider.
