Wolfram Alpha: Google’s Replacement for Factual Questions?

Years ago when computers becoming apart of our life, people thought one day this electronic brain would be able answer almost anything asked to it. Computers  can do miracles, but never answer a factual question. Although the web seems like a sea of knowledge, it’s the search engine that decides the access to knowledge. At present, Google is far ahead of the rest of the pack when it comes to searching keywords and phrases. But, what about the factual questions? There is an answer awaiting a release this May - Wolfram Alpha. This new engine has been designed by the creator of Mathematica(powerful software for mathematical investigation and visualization), Ed Tech’s scientist Stephen Wolfarm.

After the success of Mathematica, the remarkably powerful mathematical software, Stephen Wolfarm realized the need for a engine that could answer the factual questions. This could be done only implementing methods and models, algorithms, and explicitly curate all data so that it is immediately computable. Still it was not an easy job with every different kind of method and model,  and data having its own special features and characters. Amalgamating Mathematica and NKS automation and adding lot of human expertize lead to the a system that could communicate natural language to computers. This is what ultimately made the Wolfarm Alpha.

Place a search in the Google’s search bar of alpha and it deciphers the query in natural language to understand the question or even abbreviated notation. Like for instance you ask what is the number of neutrons in helium atom and you get the exact answer. According to  Nova Spivack, this is a system that computes the answer to the question by using the built-in models of fields of knowledge, complete with data and algorithms, which represents real-world knowledge. The details of the project are yet to be publicized.

It is not an engine that returns documents containing an answer like Google, which depends on a colossal database. For instance the question, What was the price of petroleum on February 4, 2008. It yields over 19 million answers on Google. Empirically Wolfram Alpha must offer the answer in a jiffy.

The bottomline reads whether this search technology would be the future of Web searches. According to the NMC’s Horizon Report the semantic-aware search could be the ace technology for the years to come. That marks a new paradigm for the use of web and its seamless knowledge base.