[idk-92]

tbh wolfram alpha was the craziest thing ever. haven't done much research on how this was implemented back in the day but to achieve what they did for such complex mathematical problems without AI was kind of nuts

[globular-toast]

Wolfram Alpha is AI. It's just not an LLM. AI has been a thing since the 60s. LLMs will also become "not AI" in a few years probably.

[fragmede]

I doubt that if the underlying parts changed, anyone outside the industry or enthusiasts would know what that is. How many people know what kind of engine is in their car? I stomp on the floor of my Corolla and away we go! Others might know that their Dodge Challenger has a Hemi. What even is that? Thankfully we have the Internet these days, and someone who's interested can just select the word and right click to Google for the Wikipedia article for it. AI is just such an entirely undefined term coloquially, that any attempts to define it will be wrong.

[phs318u]

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. The marketing that LLM=AI seems to have been interpreted as “_only_ LLM=AI”

[pjmlp]

It is basically another take on Lisp, and the development approach Lisp Machines had, repackaged in a more friendly syntax.

Lisp was the AI language until the first AI Winter took place, and also took Prolog alongside it.

Wolfram Alpha basically builds on them, to put in a very simplistic way.

[krackers]

It's one of the only M-expression versions of Lisp. All the weird stuff about Wolfram Language suddenly made sense when I saw it through that lens

[magicalhippo]

Would really like something selfhosted that does the basic Wolfram Alpha math things.

Doesn't need the craziest math capability but standard symbolic math stuff like expression reduction, differentiation and integration of common equations, plotting, unit wrangling.

All with an easy to use text interface that doesn't require learning.

[jhallenworld]

Try maxima, it's open source:

https://maxima.sourceforge.io/

I used it when it was called Macsyma running on TOPS-20 (and a PDP-10 / Decsystem-20).

Text interface will require a little learning, but not much.

[krackers]

That's wolfram mathematica.

[harrall]

Personal faves:

- Mathematica

- Maple

- MathStudio (mobile)

- Ti-89 calculator (high school favorite)

Others:

- SageMath

- GNU Octave

- SymPy

- Maxima

- Mathcad

[ge96]

I used it a lot for calc as it would show you how they got the answer if I remember right, also liked how it understands symbols which ibv but cool to paste an integral sign in there

[fooker]

> without AI

We only call it AI until we understand it.

Once we understand LLMs more and there's a new promising poorly understood technology, we'll call our current AI something more computer sciency

[simonw]

My favorite definition of AI: "AI is whatever hasn't been done yet." - Larry Tesler, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

[NuclearPM]

Thank you for being honest.