Knowledge engine

AI

question answering engine

SHOW HN2014

48points
46comments
#671of 2,272 in 2014
Top 30%of 2014 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

7 positive, 6 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 15 critical, out of 32 comments about the project. Thread score -0.25.

Performance: 2 for, 14 againstExecution: 3 for, 0 againstIdea: 1 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Answers many factual questions correctly

    From 4 comments
    • This actually worked really well for me for factual information, for example, I asked "When was the World Trade Center Built?" and it gave me the correct date. For a lot of…
      codezero on HN
    • It answered both "Who was Klaus Nomi?" and "Why do pigs fly?" correctly. That's a lot better than I usually get with these things.
      dang on HN
    • It got the Caribou coffee question of the day, "what battle ended the civil war" "surrender at Appomattox ended the civil war"
      iterationx on HN
    • >who is president of mexico Politics portal >who killed kennedy Men Who >what is the date of google's IPO June 25, 2014
      Grue3 on HN
  • Impressive work for a first version

    From 3 comments
    • Wow! Many years ago I tried to do the same. Did not manage to get far. I am seriously impressed by what you have achieved
      sosha on HN
    • Awesome and amazing piece of work here. Don't ask why I searched this, but I found one problem out of everything I searched: http://i.imgur.com/cGlclWU.png
      MrDoug12 on HN
    • Magical!
      flippyhead on HN

Objections

  • Fails on many questions, returning no answer or wrong answers

    From 4 comments
    • "What is the dollar to yen conversion rate?" > Sorry, I don't know. "Where is O'Hare?" > Sorry, I don't know. "What time is it in Japan?" > Sorry, I don't know. Needs a little…
      shogun21 on HN
    • The engine can't answer this one: How would I achieve instantaneously that a girl desires to be with me? Answer: Don't know
      errikk on HN
    • "If I filled a one square light year cube with plain chobani greek yogurt, how many calories would it contain?" > Sorry, I don't know. Come on man. If you're not going to…
      skizm on HN
    • When was the first Macintosh computer released? 1467 B.C. Needs some work...
      fuelfive on HN
  • Doesn't handle ambiguous queries such as 'President Bush'

    From 1 comment
    • My favorite test for this sort of thing is asking questions about "President Bush." Any successful engine is going to have to ask for clarification: Do you mean senior or junior?…
      cpfohl on HN
  • Answers pulled from scraped sources can be irrelevant or nonsensical

    From 3 comments
    • I asked how to make a grilled cheese sandwich and it gave me some business from stackoverflow. Is this just supposed to be for techie type questions?
      jpetersonmn on HN
    • From "How much does an elephant wiegh?" on Answers.com: Less than your mum
      tln on HN
    • There are some problems with answers form SO, example "What is monad?", but nice overall. Some answers could be combined into one like "Where is New Zealand?"
      FeatureRush on HN

Requests

  • Ask for clarification on ambiguous questions

    From 1 comment
    • I am working on handling ambiguity, as well as questions that don't have one definite answer (eg. "how should I invest 10k at a 5 year term?"). Possibly through an interface that…
      fchollet on HN
  • Scrape more data, including how-to sites

    From 1 comment
    • This actually worked really well for me for factual information, for example, I asked "When was the World Trade Center Built?" and it gave me the correct date. For a lot of…
      codezero on HN
  • Let users add their own question-answer pairs

    From 1 comment
    • Cool stuff! Perhaps a bit different, but Id love to see this implemented for specific subsets of information. Even better, a DIY version where I could enter my own QAs (or get…
      personlurking on HN

Questions

  • How does the algorithm work?

    From 1 comment
    • A discussion of the algorithm powering this can be found at: http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/quickanswers-io-a-new-algorithm.html However there are actually several types…
      fchollet on HN

Alternatives named

  • Wolfram Alpha

    From 2 comments
    • That's alright, wolfram alpha tells you the date the raincoat was invented when you plug in that question. (google gets it right)
      skizm on HN
    • I just had to try wolfram alpha. It eventually understood "how many calories would one cubic light year of greek yoghurt contain?"
      sullyj3 on HN
  • Google

    From 1 comment
    • That's alright, wolfram alpha tells you the date the raincoat was invented when you plug in that question. (google gets it right)
      skizm on HN
  • Ask Jeeves

    From 1 comment
    • It cant't answer "tell me about abundant numbers" or "should I take the red or blue pill". This reminds me of askjeeves(shudder)
      dredwerker on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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