<story><title>Introducing the Predictive Interface</title><url>http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/12/what-are-you-going-to-do-next-introducing-the-predictive-interface/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>I&apos;d say it would be even better if instead of promoting primality test (&quot;prime?&quot;) to the first place in case of a prime result, it would display &quot;[it is] prime!&quot;, since the program already did the check. Why hide information from user?&lt;p&gt;BTW, Bret Victor wrote a lot about this kind of interfaces in his essay &quot;Magic Ink&quot;. It&apos;s long as hell, but well worth the time it takes to read.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;p&gt;Key point from the end of this essay, regarding use of machine learning to create smart / learning interfaces, which really got me thinking:&lt;p&gt;&quot;Unfortunately, an algorithm that can only be wielded by a master is almost worthless. There are far more applications than experts; if application programmers cannot make use of learning, learning applications will remain rare and exotic.&lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;p&gt;As I see it, the primary challenge for the machine learning community is not the generation and tuning of yet more algorithms, but the design of simple abstractions. Learning magic must be packaged. Like a “file,” the abstraction must be usable by any engineer working in any domain. It must be so simple that it can be taken for granted.&lt;p&gt;Today, a Perl programmer needs just four letters to invoke decades of research into filesystems and physical media: “open.” A finely-tuned mergesort is available with the word “sort,” and even more finely-tuned hashing algorithms require just a pair of brackets. &lt;i&gt;Until machine learning is as accessible and effortless as typing the word “learn,” it will never become widespread.&lt;/i&gt;&quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Introducing the Predictive Interface</title><url>http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/12/what-are-you-going-to-do-next-introducing-the-predictive-interface/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>6ren</author><text>He presents prediction as new, ignoring google suggest; predictive text on phones/tablet keyboards; tab-completion in bash/vim; intellisense etc.  And it obscures the part that &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; new:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  And the second is what actions would lead to useful results.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
No longer statistical, but based on the (presently) unknown! Not predicting what you are likely to do, but exploring ahead of you.  Not based on your past, but your future... A very cool idea.&lt;p&gt;Actually, at present, it seems to be just a secondary ranking filter of statistical suggestions, so it would never consider an &lt;i&gt;original&lt;/i&gt; action (i.e. that wasn&apos;t already likely). However, that kind of exploration would really be expensive.  Another problem is defining &quot;useful results&quot; generally, so it applicable to results not seen before.</text></comment>