WolframAlpha
ThoughtStorms Wiki
Cloud-based programming language / environment from StephenWolfram
Kind of influenced by Wolfram's main product : Mathematica. A symbolic programming language for doing traditional maths.
One of its selling points is that it has a huge amount data about the world, already in the platform so you can immediately start doing work that processes and asks questions about the real world.
Quora Answer : Why does Wolfram Alpha not get updated very often?
I have no idea.
But my hunch is that this is a problem with a proprietary product run by a commercial company that isn't big enough to support it.
There is much to admire about Wolfram Alpha and the Wolfram Language. There is a very smart, very insightful guy behind it.
But clearly to be really useful, it needs major resources to maintain good up-to-date data around the world.
Clever algorithms can be done on a shoestring budget. But data is something that needs deep pockets.
And I'm guessing that Wolfram doesn't actually have them. Wolfram Alpha needs the resources of a Google or Amazon or Facebook behind it. (In fact I half expected at some point Google to step in and sponsor or buy WA, but I think the days of this kind of largess from Google are over.)
Wolfram Alpha was ahead of its time. And as all of the major giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon are pushing their AI toolkits and cloud services. Maybe one of them will buy Wolfram to incorporate it into their knowledge platform.
But otherwise I suspect Wolfram isn't in a position to sustain Alpha. And one symptom of that is probably that it isn't updated as frequently as it needs to be.
Backlinks (3 items)