robinhoustonMay 8
User cachecrab on Twitter noticed that Google has a rather unusual interpretation of the query “20% of £1k”.
Show threadSimon TathamMay 8

@robinhouston reminds me of a friend who once asked Wolfram Alpha for a graph of "tan tan x", and got a graph of tan x, drawn in a light brown colour.

I think they fixed it, though. (Disappointingly.)

Show threadrobinhoustonMay 8
@simontatham Wolfram Alpha used to have some utterly hilarious misinterpretations! I wish I could find examples.
Show thread𝓙. 𝓜.May 8
@robinhouston @simontatham this is the one I remember quite well:
Show threadrobinhoustonMay 8
@tpfto That was a classic! Thanks for digging it up.
Show thread𝓙. 𝓜.May 8
@robinhouston I sometimes get the feeling that the whole of Alpha is a collection of perfectly okay mathematical methods, held together by duct tape and baling wire. That said, I find that when they announced that ChatGPT can interface with Alpha some time back, it seemed like LLMs were the long-missing front end for Alpha.
Show threadPozorvlakMay 8
@tpfto @robinhouston I'd like to know how Alpha worked before LLMs! Probably, as you say, duct tape and baling wire.
Show threadjan Ki | 奇  
@pozorvlak @tpfto @robinhouston
classic NLUI, much more powerful than any LLM could ever dream to be
Jun 6 at 8:30pmWeb
Show thread𝓙. 𝓜.3d ago
@ki well... what I *am allowed to* say about how the business was implemented is that there's a whole lot of pattern recognition going behind the scenes. Since you mention NLUIs: deciding what to do for ambiguous input was part of why I joked about the thing being "held together by duct tape and baling wire" (there's a fair bit of weighting involved, but I am not going to say anything further). (cc. @pozorvlak @robinhouston)
Show threadjan Ki | 奇  3d ago
@tpfto @pozorvlak @robinhouston
can't be as bad as what I'm used to in my day job :') *cope*