“Enough keyword searches, just answer my question!” is the plaintive cry of one James Fallows as he bemoans his experiences in the world of search engines while trying to get answers to relatively simple questions such as – “How has California’s standing among states in per-student school funds changed since the 1960′s?”. He goes on to say what many of us have come to realize, namely that while search engines are great for simple keyword queries, they’re not so good for for more complex stuff. His point is that today’s computers are at best autistic savants … but help is on the way. A bit of help is at hand today in the form of MrSapo.com, which is the author’s favorite search portal. MrSapo’s claim to fame is that it can perform searches accross many search engines and allows easy comparisons of those results. Next up may be the Aquaint project. Aquaint’s main benefit is that it will support complex question answering via natural language queries and offer opinions on such questions as “How safe is the Muscat harbor for refueling US Navy ships?“. Eventually I supose we’ll all have LCARS-class computers, like the ones they use in Star Trek, and be able to ask it questions such as : “What came first – the chicken or the egg?” or “If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?”. Enough Keyword Searches. Just Answer My Question. – by James Fallows NYT June 12, 2005
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Check out the computer that will be on Jeopardy next month. When that kind of technology becomes widespread, your computer will be able to answer even the most complex of questions.
We need a computer that can answer: “What’s it all about, Alfie?” (The computer’s name should be Alfie in order for this to make sense.)
When search engines can answer specific questions like that, teachers are going to have to assign new kinds of homework.