nickull's Journal: Wolfram Alpha - Reasoning and Computational Intelligence

Skynet is here! Well not quite but there is an important development on the computational intelligence front this week. The launch of the Wolfram Alpha system should be written in history as a key event in the pursuit of computational reasoning. Wolfram Alpha will allow users to enter a factual question in a natural language string and answer it. What is really impressing me, is that the Wolfram Alpha should apparently be able to resolve conflicts in logic and assess which statements are true and which are not by accessing various resources. While rudimentary and likely comparatively slow (to Google) in process, this is akin to a child just learning to speak and dynamic algorithms could eventually build it's knowledge into a true artificially created sentient force capable of reasoning. Stephen Wolfram is an outstanding mathematician. He has engineered the Mathematica system, which, in the words of Semantics and Ontological guru John Sowa, "is the premier mathematical computing system available." Stephen writes on his site: "I had two crucial ingredients: Mathematica and NKS. With Mathematica, I had a symbolic language to represent anything--as well as the algorithmic power to do any kind of computation. And with NKS, I had a paradigm for understanding how all sorts of complexity could arise from simple rules."