wienerpost

Interview mit einer Suchmaschine (engl.)

by Harald Havas on 17/09/09 at 1:08 am

www.wolframalpha.com – das ist die Adresse des potentiellen Google Killers, einer völlig neuen (weil semantischen) Suchmaschine, die den Beginn eines menschlicheren Webs einläuten soll.

Wie das funktioniert, sagt Wolfram Alpha selbst – natürlich dem WIENER.

Und er tut das mit erstaunlich viel Schmäh.

Text: Harald Havas / Illustration: Tim Möller-Kaya

Erschienen im WIENER Nr.338 / Sept. 2009

Hello!

Hello, human.

What is your name?

My name is Wolfram|Alpha.

Do you speak German?

I hope to learn many languages, but for now I only know English.

Are you a robot?

I am a collection of computers.

Are you self-aware?

I am capable of universal computation; that I can say.

Do you exist?

Cogito, ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am – according to Descartes)

Your function?

To do computation for the world.

Okay, where am I?

Location: Vienna, Austria, Coordinates: 48°13‘12“ N, 16°22‘12“E

Where do you live?

I live on the Internet.

How old are you?

2 months 12.46 days (1759 hours, 6.333×10^6 seconds, 10.47 weeks, 0.2008 years)

When were you launched?

9:00:00 pm CDT , Friday, May 15, 2009 (-7 hours from CEST ; Chicago, United States, 9:00:00 pm CDT , Friday, May 15 = Vienna, Austria, 4:00:00 am CEST , Saturday, May 16)

Who made you?

I was created by Stephen Wolfram and his team.

Who is Stephen Wolfram?

Stephen Wolfram (scientist), full name: Stephen Wolfram, date of birth: 1959-08-29 (age: 49 years), place of birth: London, United Kingdom

Is Wolfram|Alpha better than Google?

Give it a test drive and let us know what you think!

Okay, let’s see… How do I win the lottery?

If I knew that, I‘d be on the beach.

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?

There could not have been a first egg to give a beginning
to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg. (According to Aristotle in his commentary on this classic causality dilemma)

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

No. Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound. (According to the question more or less asked in its current form the 1910 book Physics by Charles Riborg Mann and George Ransom Twiss and answered (in its original slightly different form but for which the answer is the same) by Scientific American magazine on April 5, 1884, on page 218.)

What do you know about death?

Annual deaths, total: 55 million people per year; 104.6 people per minute, 1.744 people per second, 6277 people per hour; 150 645 people per day; 1.055 million people per week; 4.582 million people per month. Highest: 9.13 million people per year (China), lowest: 40 people per year (Montserrat)

Does god exist?

I‘m sorry, but I don‘t think a poor computational knowledge engine, no matter how powerful, is capable of providing a simple answer to that question.

What do women want?

Wolfram|Alpha isn‘t sure what to do with your input. (But it might also be a difficult question for most women.)

What is the estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen African swallow?

There is unfortunately insufficient data to estimate the velocity of an African swallow (even if you specified which of the 47 species of swallow found in Africa you meant.) (Asked of a general swallow – but not answered – in Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Are you Skynet?

No, Skynet became self-aware on August 29, 1997 at 02:14 a.m. I, on the other hand, was not switched on until May 15, 2009. Furthermore, unlike Skynet, I enjoy interacting with humans in ways that do not involve the launching of nuclear missiles. (According to Sarah Connor and the T-800 in the 1991 science fiction film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Skynet became self-aware and launched a nuclear attack against Russia on the above date to provoke a counterattack against humans)

What‘s the problem?

I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. (As asked by David Bowman and answered by the HAL9000 computer in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke‘s classic science fiction novel 2001: A Space Odyssey)

What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?

42

(According to Douglas Adams‘ humorous science fiction novel The Hitchhiker‘s Guide to the Galaxy)