The first computational knowledge engine

May 18, 2009 14:13 GMT  ·  By

You need to start Wolfram-ing as soon as you can. The tool of choice? The freshly launched Wolfram|Alpha, an online service described as the world's first computational knowledge engine. In all fairness, it's not a Google killer, just yet. But Wolfram|Alpha certainly is capable of going where what can now be described as traditional search engines cannot. Google, Yahoo and Live Search are all limited to finding information provided that it has already been published on a web property visited by their respective crawlers. In contrast, Wolfram|Alpha uses the data available to it in order to compute new information, essentially answering questions for which no answers have been made available on the Internet.

"Fifty years ago," explained Stephen Wolfram, the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, "when computers were young, people assumed that they'd be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer. I'm happy to say that we've successfully built a system that delivers knowledge from a simple input field, giving access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms. Wolfram|Alpha signals a new paradigm for using computers and the web."

But users need to understand that Wolfram|Alpha does not function like a traditional search engine in almost all of its aspects. This includes the syntax is it capable of understanding, its architecture, the data it has available, and the general purpose it can be used for. In this sense, users will not be able, at least not yet, to turn to Wolfram|Alpha in order to find the latest information on their favorite sitcom, or their preferred band. However, the computational knowledge engine can successfully be used to compare the GDP of Span and Italy in 2007, to sum up XLVIII + LXXII, to find comprehensive information on the next solar eclipse and data on geogravity in New York.

"Wolfram|Alpha is an extremely powerful way of harnessing the world's knowledge. Now, anyone with web access can tap into that knowledge to find relevant information and discover new insights," added Theodore Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research.

In this sense, the most striking divergence from traditional search engines is that Wolfram|Alpha is self-sufficient, providing all the answers by itself. While Google, Yahoo and Live Search will point end users to a third-party website where they can find the information they are looking for, Wolfram|Alpha ignores sources, beyond just mentioning them in what can only be described as a footnote. In this sense, the brainchild of scientist Stephen Wolfram breaks the paradigm of search engines, which are traditionally designed to help users locate online destinations and to generate traffic for those destinations. With Wolfram|Alpha users don't need to go beyond the computational knowledge engine, as the service provides them with all the information they need.

“Wolfram|Alpha is made up of four main "pillars" or components: Curated Data. Wolfram|Alpha contains terabytes of factual data covering a wide range of fields. Dynamic Computation. When Wolfram|Alpha receives a user query, it extracts the relevant facts from its stored computable data and then applies a collection of tens of thousands of algorithms, creating and synthesizing new relevant knowledge. Intuitive Language Understanding. To allow Wolfram|Alpha to understand inputs entered in everyday language, its developers examine the ways people express ideas within fields and subject matters and continually refine algorithms that automatically recognize these patterns. Computational Aesthetics. Wolfram|Alpha also represents a new approach to user-interface design. The service takes user inputs and builds a customized page of clearly and usefully presented computed knowledge,” revealed Wolfram Research's Jennifer Peterson.

Last week I participated in a limited, invitation-only demonstration of Wolfram|Alpha. I had the chance to ask the father of Wolfram|Alpha, and the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, Stephen Wolfram, whether the current leaders on the search engine market, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, had shown any interest in Wolfram|Alpha. And the answer was yes. It appears that Wolfram|Alpha has attracted the attention of more than just the 200,000 people who contacted the company since information on the service started becoming available in March 2009. In fact, Wolfram mentioned that companies that weren't even involved in search showed interest in the computational knowledge engine.