Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#1

Post by linsomniac » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 4:22 AM UTC

There's a meme going around where people ask Siri the age of the President and it replies with Kamala Harris's age.

It looks like this is because Wolfram Alpha seems to think that Kamala Harris is the President Elect: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=usa+president+elect

I've known of Wolfram for years and been interested in it, but haven't really used it. Makes me curious what is behind the scenes that could make Wolfram think this. I first imagined something like where people poison Google results by posting a lot of things that cause specific searches to turn up certain people.

Searching for who is the President got the result of "Joe Biden" but with the modifier "in 2 months and 12 days". If I directly ask Wolfram Alpha how old the president is it says that it is reporting Harris' age, and also says she is an attorney.

Really curious, and kinda funny.

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#2

Post by richardjam73 » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 4:43 AM UTC

It looks like it is pulling values from the Vice President table and combining them with the President table.

Did it always do this?

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#3

Post by nullsense » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 4:52 AM UTC

Maybe it has crunched data on Joe Biden's health / age and it's predicting he will die before he is sworn in?

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#4

Post by phendrenad2 » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 4:52 AM UTC

Maybe it's scraping Wikipedia, and someone changed the table structure on the Wikipedia page? Would be nice if WolframAlpha showed it's sources more precisely (it just says "Wikipedia " among others).

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#5

Post by mod » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

nullsense wrote: post #3

Maybe it has crunched data on Joe Biden's health / age and it's predicting he will die before he is sworn in?

I can imagine the conspiracy theories that will emerge if this comes to pass and these comments are dug up.

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#6

Post by duxup » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

mod wrote: post #5

nullsense wrote: post #3

Maybe it has crunched data on Joe Biden's health / age and it's predicting he will die before he is sworn in?

I can imagine the conspiracy theories that will emerge if this comes to pass and these comments are dug up.

Sadly the conspiracy theory that Biden would accept the nomination and somehow transfer it to Hillary or Harris (and less frequently mentioned Bernie / Obama) has made the rounds on the internet already a few times already. As you might expect the predictions have morphed a bit lately, like such conspiracy theories always change with no intellectual honesty that the dozens of other predictions were dead wrong, but the moment something happens that even seems like one of them, blamo someone will claim a sort of prediction victory.

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#7

Post by m0zg » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

Probably because of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ2mWrejgnc /s

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#8

Post by nullsense » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 7:10 AM UTC

mod wrote: post #5

nullsense wrote: post #3

Maybe it has crunched data on Joe Biden's health / age and it's predicting he will die before he is sworn in?

I can imagine the conspiracy theories that will emerge if this comes to pass and these comments are dug up.

If that does happen: for the record I'm stoked Biden won, and the comment was just a light hearted joke.

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#9

Post by konservativeKen » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 8:11 AM UTC

nullsense wrote: post #8

mod wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine the conspiracy theories that will emerge if this comes to pass and these comments are dug up.

If that does happen: for the record I'm stoked Biden won, and the comment was just a light hearted joke.

At this time it's still just the media projecting a win but last I checked the media doesn't decide the president. #stopthesteal #TRUMP_TRAIN2020 #REDWAVE

Re: Ask HN: Why Does Wolfram Alpha Think Kamala Harris Is the President Elect?

#10

Post by sangli » Mon, Nov 09, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

konservativeKen wrote: post #9

nullsense wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that does happen: for the record I'm stoked Biden won, and the comment was just a light hearted joke.

At this time it's still just the media projecting a win but last I checked the media doesn't decide the president. #stopthesteal #TRUMP_TRAIN2020 #REDWAVE

Are you confused? This is not twitter, my friend.