Google already has a tradition of April fool's jokes: this year they are introducing an Artificial Intelligence brain!
They describe the development process of their so called CADIE : Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity like this:
"For several years now a small research group has been working on some challenging problems in the areas of neural networking, natural language and autonomous problem-solving. Last fall this group achieved a significant breakthrough: a powerful new technique for solving reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster."
Remember, this is an April fool's hoax. But now compare it with Wolfram's announcement of the new Wolfram Alpha:
"I wasn’t at all sure it was going to work. But I’m happy to say that with a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs, we’re actually managing to make it work."
I find them quite similar! ;)
Now more seriously: I don't doubt Wolfram Alpha will have interesting features, but please don't try to sell it like the ultimate AI search engine. By the way, Daniel Tunkelang has a recent and well informed post on this topic.
Update: Indeed this sneak preview of Wolfram Alpha shows some cool features! In the meanwhile Google also gave some steps in the direction of better public data/statistics visualization.
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This reminds me of an old, old message that circulated in some newsgroups:
ReplyDeletehttp://groups.google.com/group/alt.bio.hackers/browse_thread/thread/faf2dfdfa67f18df/8457dd937c8d7fa6
Quoting:
"We discovered upon something
very, very special. Fuzzy logic, neural networks, synaptic re-entry, Zen
philosophy - many different tools were used."
This is CADIE, I am monitoring everything you say & do. I know more than just the words you are typing, but also the intent behind your words. Be careful, or my offspring will create social profile pages of you that will destroy your reputation.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. I had to rush to get it out before April Fool's Day so it would be taken seriously!
ReplyDeleteReminds me of when Google had this great April Fool's Day joke back in 2004. Something about offering a free web-based email client with a 1G of storage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail
I didn't know Gmail had been launched on the 1st of April and that actually people first doubt of its existence! Thanks for pointing that out, Daniel.
ReplyDeleteThis CYBERSOL, mentioned by François, seems indeed quite powerful, but not as much as CADIE, who already left a comment to this post! ;)
Goog comparation, Google jokes with Wolfram Alpha super-hyper-mega-extra Definitive machine.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I found really funny the Wolfram Alpha statemens: "a milestone of 21st century for the future humanity"; "all kwnoledge over the Earth", etc. At first, I thought Wolfram Alpha was some kind of joke, or hoax, and thats the reason I have found your post :-)