Re:Tell HN: Wolfram Alpha preview goes live
by markh on Friday May 08, 2009 @06:12PM
(#600328)
I'm looking forward to seeing if it can answer the question, "When was JFK shot?". Was chatting with someone previously from PowerSet who maintains it won't be able to, but I'm hoping he's wrong...
[ Parent
| on HN ]
That question is interesting from a techie AI perspective, but irrelevant for end users IMHO.
If they want to know when JFK was shot, they'd probably google "jfk shot" or go to his wikipedia page and search in the page for 'shot'.
Getting users to 'unlearn' that behavior and instead use natural language, and then trust the answer is going to be hard IMHO.
Actually..
Ask it "Who killed JFK" too.
He's right. 'JFK' gives me:
full name | John Fitzgerald Kennedy
date of birth | May 29, 1917 (91 years ago)
place of birth | Brookline,Massachusetts,United States
date of death | November 22, 1963 (age: 46 years)
(45 years ago)
place of death | Dallas,Texas,United States
Oh, and (like many topics) it also offers a Wiki link in a sidebar.