South by Southwest Interactive gets underway today in Austin, Texas, and a broad swath of the technology community will be headed there to check out the bands, barbecue, and, oh yeah, the startups. Ever since Twitter had its breakout moment at the 2007 festival, SXSW has been considered a king-maker of sorts. Yet no startup has [...]
Judging bytrending topics on Twitter, I was not alone in reserving an iPad today as pre-orders began for the April 3 launch. The experience was un-Apple-like in the bugs I encountered. Ordering did not work at all on the Apple site in Google’s Chrome browser, but was possible with the odd error page in Internet Explorer. In Chrome, it [...]
As the FTC lays the groundwork for a possible challenge to Google’s purchase of AdMob, it is instructive to look at something else Google has already done to gain a strong foothold in the mobile ad business. Any advertiser that bids through the AdWords system gives Google complete authority over which devices its messages are seen [...]
In another validation of the suddenly hot collective buying trend, LivingSocial has landed $25m in Series B funding from a group of investors including US Venture Partners and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC. But even with new money backing several similar companies, it is still unclear if the latest thing in e-commerce will last for long. LivingSocial [...]
Sony has every right to feel sore that Nintendo and Microsoft have stolen the limelight from it in adding motion-sensing to games. Sony had the EyeToy camera for sensing motion and putting players inside games on the PlayStation 2, long before Microsoft’s forthcoming Project Natal . Its six-axis controller has always had more motion capabilities than the [...]
Starting today, every Monday this blog is going to highlight some stories of humanity around the world that are inspirational. This will act as a reminder to each of us not to become cynical but rather to celebrate the endeavors of people to either help others, enlighten others, move the evolution of our species forward or other acts of genuine consideration and innovation, and to ask ourselves, “What can we do too to make things better?”
In each case, I’ll provide some commentary on the specific reasons why I consider the named person a positive example for us. This is all designed to set us onto productive mindsets and paths at the beginning of every week.
I’m doing this for very valid reasons. Recent months have witnessed the systematic erosion of public trust by people in positions of power such as these cases:
Adding to this has been the reportage on conflict zones around the world such as the Gaza crisis, the Sri Lanka-Tamil Tigers situation, the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan/Darfur and other issues in which we have an interest as global citizens; citizens who want to be informed about how our societies are shaping up and who are seeking leadership and inspiration.
Clearly, there’s room for improvement so I’m going to do my little bit and highlight some inspirational people. I’ve always believed that our role models need not be elected officials (Presidents, CEOs, headmasters, etc.) and nor do they need to be celebrities (Oscar winners, Grammy artistes, Turner-toting intellectuals, etc). Heroism and inspiration come in all shapes, sizes, cultures, creeds and demographics.
Let me start with these three people from articles I’ve read so far in May.
(1.) KYAW KYAW MIN
Please read this article of genuine responsibility and care towards others:
This teenage boy is remarkable in the face of both his parents being killed during Burma’s cyclone Nargis and his current mission to raise his younger brother and three-year-old sister. If ever there was a reason to find out more about Save the Children (http://www.savethechildren.org/) and how to help youngsters like Kyaw Kyaw Min and his family, then this article will provide some answers.
(2.) RACHEL SHABI
She is the author of ‘Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands’ which is a book I plan to read soon. I’m mentioning her in this blog because of this article which was published in ‘The Times’ online recently:
It was a really helpful article for enlightening me about an area of cultural identity wrt Jews and Arabs and their commonailty which I wasn’t previously aware of.
This type of information is the sort that breaks through ignorant stereotypes and empowers us with perspective on how and why there should be racial harmony in the region.
(3.) GUY HANDS
Guy Hands is a well-known British venture capitalist and the founder of Terra Firma, the private equity group. Whilst others in the financial services sectors have been criticized for putting personal gains before responsibilities to shareholders and investors first, Guy Hands announced the return of EUR40 million in bonuses to his investors:
I missed this article in March and only happened across it this month whilst reading various reports on how wealthy Britons and companies are moving abroad (to the Channel Islands / Ireland / Switzerland / Monaco / Dubai etc.) in response to the Labor government’s increase in top-rate tax to 50p and the changes to corporation tax.
Whilst, admittedly, EUR40 million may seem like peanuts compared with the US$ billions managed and lost by hedge funds and financial institutions globally, the ethos behind the gesture is a good one.
In the article, Guy Hands notes that, “This is absolutely right; our investors have suffered and therefore our rewards should suffer at the same time.”
This is a reminder to all financial services professionals that they should be stewards rather than speculators of other people’s money and that their rewards should be tied to performance — including retrospectively foregoing bonuses for poor performance.
The Citigroup, General Motors, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland etc. boards should take notes and consider following this lead.
As promised, I’ve now plugged and played with the new “computational knowledge engine” offering from Stephen Wolfram, the British-born physicist renowned for having been awarded his Ph.D. when he was just 20 and being the inventor of Mathematica, a highly regarded research tool amongst the academic scientific community.
Wolfram Alpha had a soft launch on Friday 15 May following various media “sneak previews” in late April and it’s officially live today.
As per my previous provisos (please follow links provided at end of this blog), I’ve reserved assessment on the system until today so that it’s based not on being influenced by either SemWeb hype nor journalistic ignorance, but rather objective intelligence and a mild dose of wit. Some of the articles written to-date about Wolfram Alpha have been poorly researched and re-hashes of whatever PR has been issued by the company rather than informative. This has been unhelpful for determining where and how the various search / browse / info source systems are differentiated.
This is why I decided to do my own Twain test.
I’m interested in any AI / natural language processing / Bayesian alternative / neural nets / innovative attempts to connect and make sense of the vast amount of knowledge out there (within the Internet as well as as-yet electronically unarchived sources). I’m also interested in machines which try to discern meanings, wit and nuances from our questions in an equivalent manner to how humans do naturally.
Yes, I am aware that Stephen Wolfram has provided guidance that the system is not AI. That’s clear from this Semantic Universe article:
Now, since Wolfram Alpha is based on Mathematica I decided not to ask any straightforward numerical questions; most of us are aware by now that it can deal with statistics, indices, trigonometry, Fourier analysis, Boltzmann constants, Boyle’s gas pressures, the various constituents in organic reactions, velocity in space calculations and other scientific and quant-oriented calculations etc. fairly well.
What would be more interesting is to really test its semantic extraction, linguistic deduction and visual generation capabilities.
Below are my 10 questions accompanied by screenshots of and commentary on the results. Wolfram Alpha is being directly compared with Google’s and True Knowledge’s which are its nearest competitors in this test. Incidentally, Wolfram has apparently noted that since it’s not AI it’s unfair to compare it with HAL or Cyc but compared with Google or Yahoo. I chose True Knowledge because as was (rightfully) highlighted by some friends elsewhere, this would be an interesting case study.
TWAIN’S 10 QUESTIONS
(1.)Who discovered radium?
(2.)Where is Atlantis?
(3.)How do we make gold from lead?
(4.)Can robots dream?
(5.)What is a sprite? [This is my trick question since ‘Sprite’ is a drinks brand as well as a type of fairy.]
(6.)When did Homo Erectus become Homo Sapien?
(7.)Why are we here?
(8.)How many light bulbs are there in the world?
(9.)Who is the Vitruvian Man?
(10.)Where is Schrodinger’s cat?
These questions may seem off-the-wall, but actually they’re not.
Wolfram Alpha is being built by scientists so information on who discovered radium, the evolution of Man, the alchemy of metals, scientific expeditions and application of geothermal imaging / satellite capture of potential sites for Atlantis, the proliferation of light bulbs which are the invention of Thomas Edison and the connections to Schrodinger’s cat should be easily surfaced by the system since it is all familiar territory to scientists, machines are built in the mould and mind of their creators and before we expect Wolfram Alpha to provide us with the missing links between Marilyn Monroe and baseball (answer: Joe di Maggio) in pop culture and sports arenas — two sample areas where ‘Der Spiegel’ has already highlighted Wolfram Alpha’s current deficiencies (http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,624065-10,00.html) — it should at least be able to deal better with queries associated with its forté, science. Even if it’s not precise and no visual graphics can be generated, the algorithm should direct us to sources where we can delve further and derive some answers.
Unfortunately, as can be seen from the screenshots Wolfram Alpha gives several “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input” answers.
Hmmn………
By comparison, as an example, Google recognizes the deliberate spelling mistake I made on the search term “VEtruvian Man” and asks me whether I mean “VItruvian Man” and it provides multiple links to suitable sites where I might find the answers. Meanwhile, True Knowledge doesn’t catch the spelling mistake and only offers, “It sounds like the vitruvian man may be a human being, organisation or other legal person that I don’t know about yet,” with a suggestion that I teach the system about him and input my knowledge in via the wiki.
As for the question, “Where is Schrodinger’s cat?” I suppose I could have been mischievous and asked, “Where is Schrodinger’s car?” instead to determine whether any of the three systems understood that it’s still a question about quantum physics and the ‘quantum indeterminacy or the observer’s paradox’. In other words, where we are and how we observe relative to the cat (aka the reception of visual particles into our eyes vis-à-vis the cat — which is an analogy for atoms invisible to the naked human eye, btw) itself affects an outcome, so that the outcome as such does not exist unless the measurement is made. Ergo, there is no single outcome unless and, I’d say, UNTIL it is observed.
If I put the cat into the car then the computational search engines will get even more confused……….LOL.
As it is, Google does a fairly decent job of discerning that I mean “Schrodinger’s cat” and even when I use “car” it provides me with a link to a YouTube entitled ‘Schrodinger’s car and parallel universes’.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the screenshots of the Twain test. Yes, and everyone should be aware that no media outlets have reported any “slow script” messages from Wolfram Alpha in their tests and I found one on my second query, “Where is Atlantis?” Oops, WA……
TEST RESULT SCREENSHOTS + TWAIN CONTEXT
(1.) Who discovered radium?
This is a straightforward question and the expectation would be that a diagram of a radium atom would be generated along with a map of where it was discovered along with a picture of Marie Curie. Instead, this is what each system produced:
(2.) Where is Atlantis?
This question resulted in a “slow script” message on Wolfram Alpha before it offered a map location of Atlantis as being on the South African peninsula coast. Like True Knowledge, it didn’t make that interpretation leap to identifying Atlantis as a potential mythical construct rather than an actual geographic location.
Google does make that interpretation leap.
(3.) How do we make gold from lead?
Ideally, the generated answer should show the historical (failed) attempts by various people to turn lead into gold — including the tales from the Hermetic schools of thought on this and those during Croesus’ age.
(4.) Can robots dream?
Would Isaac Aasimov / Philip K. Dick / Stanley Kubrick be impressed by the latest machine offering which produces results like these?
Wolfram Alpha says it “isn’t sure what to do with your input”. If I’d programmed the algorithm I’d make it respond like so, “Please ask us again in the morning after we’ve had the chance to sleep on it and think about it. Thanks!”
(5.) What is a sprite?
This is my trick question since ‘Sprite’ is a drinks brand as well as a type of fairy. Interestingly, Wolfram Alpha generates what appears to be the nutritional content of a can of Sprite but fails to pick up that the query may be about a glowing elfin creature that appears at the bottom of gardens in works of fiction. Meanwhile, Google pulls in some references to the term being relevant in computer graphics as well as the faerie references.
True Knowledge goes off-base and provides us with a picture of a ferret followed by a definition of it being a drink from Coca-Cola.
(6.) When did Homo Erectus become Homo Sapien?
Again, this should have produced a straightforward answer — either in the form of a timeline chart plotting the Evolution of Man which is being pieced together by anthropologists and other scientists or in the form of a textual examination into various Jurassic, Ice, Neanderthal, Paleolithic etc. ages.
(7.) Why are we here?
The greatest Existentialist question in our search for knowledge which perplexes philosophers, physicists, Presbytarians, polemicists, party people et al alike.
(8.) How many light bulbs are there in the world?
Let’s compare WA’s answer with Google’s. Google’s first link offers some data from Wiki answers on the daily production levels of light bulbs as well as the estimated annual expenditure on them whilst WA says it isn’t sure how to use the query input — which is, effectively, what True Knowledge also says. Interestingly in the TK results, there seems to be some kind of lag and it shows answers to the previous question of ‘Why are we here?’
Perhaps the lightbulb isn’t on in the TK thought engine — LOL.
(9.) Who is the Vitruvian Man?
Here, the search / computational engines should ideally have generated an image of Da Vinci’s famous drawing within the semantic context of the query. None of the systems did. Notably, neither Wolfram Alpha nor True Knowledge auto-corrected the deliberate spelling mistake of Vitruvian Man whilst Google did spot it and auto-amend.
(10.) Where is Schrodinger’s cat?
At the very least, Wolfram Alpha should have produced some equations associated with Erwin Schrodinger’s postulations as well as their interlinkages with Einstein’s, Stephen Hawking’s and the research currently being undertaken with the Large Hadron Collider. Plus the research from the Austrian university who managed to demonstrate time-travel by sending quarks over the River Danube.
Well, that’s how my mind would work if I was trying to locate Schrodinger’s cat and its connectivity trails…..
This is what the systems gave us instead:
CONCLUSION FROM TWAIN TEST
Google isn’t going to be killed just yet with today’s launch of Wolfram Alpha. Certainly, it’s helpful to see more visual and graphical representation of computed results but, then again,……….Kosmix does that better than Wolfram Alpha, Google and True Knowledge.
Once Google Squared goes officially live we’ll probably realize and accept that Google is keeping ahead of the curve by crossing Semantic knowhow with more visual knowledge representation techniques.
Companies should avoid marketing themselves or being labelled by the media / so-called search experts as “Google killers” and paradigm shifters before they’ve actually been tested by ordinary people like me or gone live. It’s critical to manage expectations and also to be more aware of the types of random and unexpected queries which do pop up in people’s minds and that they’d like the computational and philosophical derivations to.
Since the Semantic community is aiming towards artificial agents being able to answer some of the world’s most complex questions, systems should definitely be able to either answer questions like mine or, at least, provide appropriate and meaningful links to where else I can and should seek the answers.
In any case, innovations like Wolfram Alpha and other (non) Google killers can only result in keeping Google and other tech giants on their toes and result in improved search-browse-computational-discerning-sensemaking tools for us.
Hurrah! This is gr8 for us as information consumers, knowledge connectors and sense discoverers.
Yes and any company who’d like me to road-test their systems prior to launch should contact me, :*).
*************************************
For completion, here are the two blogs I wrote last week on the today-launched Wolfram Alpha platform:
