Kozoru, a new question answering engine, is talking more openly about its approach to search on its home page. From their first blog entry:
We believe that kozoru is a necessary first step towards the next stage of search technology. Instead of entering keywords into the search bar, you’ll be able to ask a question and get an answer. In fact, kozoru doesn’t understand keywords. We know that might be a little hard to believe, but you can really only ask kozoru questions.
There are some big claims on the site:
After all, how can we do this in less than 9 months when others are still trying to solve this problem after 20 or more years? However, that’s probably the easiest question to answer.
Basically, we’re free to do whatever we want. It may sound odd, but the secret sauce at kozoru is that we aren’t constrained by keywords or neural nets or the traditional academic notions of what A.I. should do.
And I really feel that’s how it is with any disruptive technology. A few key people come together and say, “Why has everybody been doing it this way?” It was that way with the Manhattan Project. It was that way with James Watson. It was that way at PARC.
We’re betting it’s that way with kozoru.
Well, we’re waiting to see….