WolframAlpha- the best is yet to come!

For those disappointed by WolframAlpha, the best is yet to come!
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from : http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18163-innovation-the-dizzying-ambition-of-wolfram-alpha.html

Learning on the job

Wolfram claims there is more to come. Since its launch, Wolfram says Alpha has been exposed to more utterances than a typical child would hear in learning a new language, allowing it to get smarter at understanding how people phrase their requests.

My own experience is that Alpha seems able to answer queries today that it could not parse just a month or two ago. It feels like Alpha has become smarter.

Ultimately Wolfram wants Alpha to generate knowledge of its own. "One of things I imagine will happen with Wolfram Alpha is that you'll be able to ask it a question, and instead of it using knowledge that came out of a method invented 50 years ago it will invent a new method on the fly to answer it."

Just how a knowledge engine will do this kind of work isn't clear – at least, Wolfram isn't any more forthcoming. Neither is it clear when we'll see this capability. It would be easy to dismiss it as the wild-eyed hyperbole of a fanatic, but that would be doing Wolfram disservice.

His track record in business and in academia means that his predictions cannot be lightly dismissed. And his latest moves to open up Alpha show that it will still be troubling the established search engines for a while yet.

For those who want to know what WolframAlpha is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolframalpha

Dave