[ggchappell]

Knowing no more about this than the PR thus far, I am pessimistic, but for not quite the same reason as some other commenters.

I think a couple of things are clear.

(1) We are at the point where something impressive is likely to be able to be produced, and Wolfram may very well have the resources to do it.

(2) We are not at the point where the be-all-end-all version of this can be produced.

Compare this with the symbolic computation packages (Mathematica, Maple, etc.). Around 1990, we were at the point where we could produce a very good one. Several were written. They have been improved since, but only marginally. We're still pretty much using 1990 technology.

And that's fine. We knew how to make a really good symbolic computation package. We did. End of story.

But consider the proposed packages (Alpha, etc.). We might produce something impressive. But we are not ready to produce something really good and useful. Our initial efforts will require lots of improving.

And Wolfram is definitely not the one to do that improving. He runs an aggressively closed shop. Always has. I predict, therefore, that the cathedral-bazaar effect is going to mean his product will be difficult to improve, and so will never become truly useful.

[gfodor]

This too is my concern. The guy is brilliant, but I really feel technology like this can only reach its full potential by being open and extendible by domain experts. Hopefully Wolfram realizes this as well -- it sounds like he has put forth significant effort and money bootstrapping the engine with knowledge and so on, hopefully he passes the torch to the rest of the world and doesn't propose his company be the only source of information into this engine.

If he provides not just technology and data but also the means to extend that technology and data by following his example he might be contributing something truly revolutionary.