April 30, 2009
A new paradigm for the web?
Wolfram Alpha has been working on a new web tool that will “be as important as Google.”
The new tool uses a technique known as natural language processing to return answers. This allows users to ask questions of the tool using normal, spoken language rather than specific search terms.
For example, a relatively simple search, such as “who was the president of Brazil in 1923?”, will return the answer “Artur da Silva Bernardes”.
This technique has long been the holy grail of computer scientists who aim to allow people to interact with computers in an instinctive way.
If this actually works like they say it does, then it would make the ultimate iPhone app.
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[...] couple weeks ago, Andrew posted about Wolfram Alpha, a natural language search engine currently in development. Since then, The Berkman Center at [...]