3 ms·

Perhaps only tangentially related, but your comment reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Charles Babbage, regarding his analytical engine: > On two oc

Perhaps only tangentially related, but your comment reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Charles Babbage, regarding his analytical engine: > On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage

tialaramex 9y ago
Note that Babbage has the wrong end of this. Part of Google's success is realising that yes, your goal needs to be that the right answer comes out when asked the wrong question. If you type "Rebecca Editor of Star Newspaper" it doesn't matter that's not how she spells her name, or that she was never editor of the Daily Star, nor that she's not now editor of anything at all, having been effectively promoted, Google correctly determines that you probably want results about a famous British woman named Rebekah Brooks. There's an SF story, I thought it was a Multivac story but a list of those doesn't find it for me, where the world computer has been making "mistakes" and the technicians trying to diagnose it eventually realise its "mistakes" are actually causing humans who've disobeyed its instructions to fail. The computer has been tasked with improving efficiency, and disobedience results in inefficiency, so it has arranged for those who are disobedient to be unsuccessful. It isn't murdering anybody, but maybe they'll go bankrupt or miss out on a promotion and so the overall inefficiency is reduced.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
burger_moon 9y ago
Can you explain what this means? I don't understand what the person you're quoting is saying.
- dgritsko 9y ago
  Charles Babbage is referring to two separate occasions upon which he was asked if his "analytical engine" (what some might consider the first computer) would still produce the right answer to a problem even if the wrong input was supplied. The answer is so painfully obvious -- of course it won't! -- that Babbage remarks that he can't even understand how confused the person must be in order to ask such a question.

tialaramex 9y ago

Note that Babbage has the wrong end of this. Part of Google's success is realising that yes, your goal needs to be that the right answer comes out when asked the wrong question. If you type "Rebecca Editor of Star Newspaper" it doesn't matter that's not how she spells her name, or that she was never editor of the Daily Star, nor that she's not now editor of anything at all, having been effectively promoted, Google correctly determines that you probably want results about a famous British woman named Rebekah Brooks. There's an SF story, I thought it was a Multivac story but a list of those doesn't find it for me, where the world computer has been making "mistakes" and the technicians trying to diagnose it eventually realise its "mistakes" are actually causing humans who've disobeyed its instructions to fail. The computer has been tasked with improving efficiency, and disobedience results in inefficiency, so it has arranged for those who are disobedient to be unsuccessful. It isn't murdering anybody, but maybe they'll go bankrupt or miss out on a promotion and so the overall inefficiency is reduced.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

burger_moon 9y ago

Can you explain what this means? I don't understand what the person you're quoting is saying.

dgritsko 9y ago
Charles Babbage is referring to two separate occasions upon which he was asked if his "analytical engine" (what some might consider the first computer) would still produce the right answer to a problem even if the wrong input was supplied. The answer is so painfully obvious -- of course it won't! -- that Babbage remarks that he can't even understand how confused the person must be in order to ask such a question.