Wolfram Promises Computing That Answers Questions 369
An anonymous reader writes "Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram feels that he has put together at least the initial version of a computer that actually answers factual questions, a la Star Trek's ship computers. His version will be found on their Web-based application, Wolfram Alpha. What does this mean? Well, instead of returning links to pages that may (or may not) contain the answer to your questions, Wolfram will respond with the actual answer. Just imagine typing in 'How many bones are in the human body?' and getting the answer." Right now, though the search entry field is in place, Alpha is not yet generally available -- only "to a few select individuals."
Can he do this for politicians, as well? (Score:2, Insightful)
a computer that actually answers factual questions
I've never seen a politician who has been able to do that. But I guess they don't want to either.
Computers are useless... (Score:5, Insightful)
...they only give you answers.
Re:Lojban (Score:4, Insightful)
is the answer to this question "no"?
If you want to answer a question without understanding the question then how do you know when the question can be answered?
Re:Lojban (Score:1, Insightful)
You look for an answer until you find it or give up.
Deep Thought version 0.1? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Hmm. Tricky."
We miss you, Mr. Adams.
All the Wolfram promises (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Computers are useless... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good points, but this is still just a different (better perhaps?) implementation of the same concept. The big issue with the implementation is that it will only "know" what you tell it, the same as any other computer. Further it will only be able to tell you about what you want to know based on the system's ability to parse your question and return what it "thinks" you want to know.
Look, I'm not saying it isn't a cool idea, I'm just saying that it isn't as shiny and new as the creator would lead you to believe. I'm also not inclined to be impressed considering that it isn't even available to try yet. It hasn't even been released yet.
Just Words (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as they are not showing the tool to the public, I do not believe they build a system which promises that. However, there have been lots of research in this area and there are methods to convert queries into horn-clauses so you can query knowledge bases. I designed a method in my master thesis which does similar things, however it was laid out to be performed by humans.
As ingredients for such a system you need
- a knowledge base filled with facts (you can use OWL for it if you want or a rule based approach)
- a reasoner (e.g. something like pellet)
- a rule engine (e.g. something like Jess)
- a method which understands simple English query sentences.
The really hard part is the knowledge base, because it is lots of work. And an automated approach which can understand written documents and classify them correctly would be great, but I doubt that they found a solution for this problem.
This problem includes:
- How to handle uncertainty?
- What to do with contradicting knowledge?
- What to do with temporal aspects in that knowledge?
However, if they built a tool which can answer question of one single domain of knowledge, this is nothing new. Such machines exist now for a long time. They can be helpful, but there is nothing exciting about them.
Re:Anyone remember AskJeeves? (Score:5, Insightful)
Circumference of the earth [google.com]?
Number of horns on a unicorn [google.com]?
Google already does this. It's giving you the answer and linking to the page that has it. All Google needs is to be able to use these things in the calculator ("circumference of the earth in furlongs").
Oh and related to your "rupees in a dollar". "1 dollar in indian rupees [google.com]" will tell you.
Re:Lojban (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't sweat it ... these are the same people who believe that a computer can "think" about chess, instead of just searching through N number of plies in T time, then offering the best solution it has found in those constraints, without ever having to "understand" chess on any level.
This can be applied to ANY problem, provided you want to invest the design and testing time.
This whole question was answered decades ago (1970s) with the "foreigner in a sealed room" turing thought experiment. It showed that the person in the sealed room doesn't have to understand english, or even know the answer to questions, provided they are given some simple rules to link words together in a response depending on what words are in the original statement.
Re:Lojban (Score:3, Insightful)
Moreso, I'd argue that true reasoning would be the ability to provide a factual answer to a subjective question.
For example, "Does food taste good?"
The machine would have to take into account the vast bits of information at it's disposal. For example, found statements like 'This food tastes good' and 'this food does not taste good', would both have to be considered and then qualifiers added to the answer to make it correct, such as 'Some food tastes good'.
Otherwise, it's just fancy regurgitation of facts using a complex language parser.
The ever-decreasing depth of human knowledge (Score:3, Insightful)
Tools like this are decreasing the general ability of the population to research - resulting in a debt in 'comprehensive knowledge' on topics.
Yes, tools like search engines enhance our ability to retrieve information faster than written documents such as manuals, dictionaries, and fiction, but they do not - 100% of the time, or even 80% of the time - lead us to the answers to complex questions directly. We are still required, as human beings, to read material, digest it, and often confer an answer.
People will largely lose the ability to make (effective) decisions on their own, because the critical inputs for a good decision are usually both a broad and deep understanding of the topics at hand.
Think of what kind of impact this would have on the overall problem solving ability of a population. Problem solving is often largely qualified by a person's ability to get a good picture of what the problem is. What do we do when a person can simply ask complex questions where a wealth of experience was previously required? Sure, this allows people to move on to do other things, but...
When you make it so that your analytical people - the problem solvers and those who create new things - are made irrelevant by a technology, you as a society will stop evolving socially. No, it will not happen immediately. It will happen gradually, over the period of a generation. Consider the dearth between the research abilities of a previous generation, and those who are graduating college today. There is a substantial difference, and the ease in which information is acquirable today has had a lot to do with this shortcoming.
Re:Lojban (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says that this is insufficient for "thinking"?
I think understanding the Chinese room paradox as having provided a solution to this question is a misinterpretation. The best thing to take away is that "thinking" is not well defined.
Re:The ever-decreasing depth of human knowledge (Score:1, Insightful)
Think of what kind of impact this would have on the overall problem solving ability of a population.
That's easy: Like all progress, it will free us to focus on higher-level concerns.
When you make it so that your analytical people - the problem solvers and those who create new things - are made irrelevant by a technology
...then you free the people to concentrate on recreation and the arts, and thus...
you as a society will stop evolving socially.
...the exact opposite of your doom and gloom prophecy will occur. You seem to be under the strange impression that the only thing a body of people can contribute to the future is the problems they solve. How depressing.
Consider the dearth between the research abilities of a previous generation, and those who are graduating college today. There is a substantial difference, and the ease in which information is acquirable today has had a lot to do with this shortcoming.
Ooooooh.... Oh. So--you didn't really mean any of that stuff you just wrote, you just wanted to "prove" that your generation is better than the generation that proceeded it. I also get a strong whiff of "I 'ad ta do things the hard way, so gosh durn it, the young'uns oughta, 'swell. Builds character!" Yeaaaaaaaah.... NO. The world moves on. Move along with it.
Re:The ever-decreasing depth of human knowledge (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect it will be similar to the great cultural loss of the ability to memorize long narratives that was brought about by the invention of writing.
Re:Lojban (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lojban (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahh, but how many bones does a one-armed midget with three fused vertebra who just swallowed a whole parakeet have?
Re:Lojban (Score:3, Insightful)
What exactly does Godel's theorem have to do with what you just said? The incompleteness theorem deals with axiomatized systems. This leads me to think that you might be confusing the popular meaning of "language" with the mathematical definition. People (at least normal people) do not communicate with mathematical languages.
If you have an unambiguous system, that means it must be possible to give an exact translation from it into mathematics. After all, that's what mathematical notation really is, a way of unambiguously saying things.
But wait! Goedel says that there are no interesting complete mathematical systems (yeah, I do know what axiomatization is, thankyouverymuch). From that we can then deduce that the language that is being translated from must either be able to describe paradoxical entities whose interpretation/valuation must be necessarily ambiguous (that's what Goedel actually did, it's the heart of his proof) or that the originating language is unutterably trivial - that it can't even talk about simple arithmetic for example, let alone actual complex concepts.
The heart of my real argument though was that most people prefer ambiguity. If someone writes "my love is like a red, red rose", it shouldn't have to include a frequency profile of the reflected light off the rose or a precise description of the variety. (More seriously, many poets explicitly want the ambiguity; the reader is supposed to have to work to extract the correct meaning(s) of the poem.)
Re:Lojban (Score:3, Insightful)