3 ms·
It's a bit older than that: "On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out
by ajb 2y ago
It's a bit older than that:
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." - Charles Babbage
- zevets 2y agoBabbage is wrong! He is answering what a computation engine will do, but not what a "wise" person would do, which is the _the_ test of AI. The goal of wisdom (and good teaching) is to first correct the faulty assumptions of the questioner that leads them to ask a bad question, and then once they ask a good question, then and _only_ then, provide the answer to the question.
- ajb 2y agoI don't see how Baggage can be considered wrong here as such, when he's giving a simple statement of fact about himself. We don't know whether he attempted to elucidate the questioners assumptions. However, I always wonder if the questioners might have suspected that the engine was a fake. The original Mechanical Turk was extent in around the same period, although I'm not sure when it's trick was uncovered.