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pixl97 • yesterday at 4:02 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"

If a random person comes up and asks you a malformed question how do you answer? What's worse if what if the question is not actually malformed in some contexts and because you're a wizard that has massive amount of contextual information there are plenty of right answers for the 'wrong' question you just asked.

In schools classrooms tend to avoid unlimited exploration as it would take unlimited time. On your AI prompt the next thing you ask could be anything, anything at all. Just exactly how is the AI supposed to know if you're an idiot?


Replies

spwa4 • yesterday at 9:38 PM

Continuing the great tradition of claiming that any machine, and especially any AI, unless it takes over literally everything, is worthless. Or in the words of Pablo Picasso:

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (he was not joking by the way)

Of course, if computers DO threaten to take over literally everything, then people are even more scared and react aggressively, as demonstrated in this 1939 article describing IBM's vocoders:

"The Pedro Peril" (the first AI that actually talked back was nicknamed Pedro, and described as "the latest and most fearful gadget from IBM", the journalist's conclusion was to suggest Pedro be deported as he would spread propaganda and maybe even become a dictator) (unsigned Washington Post editorial, 1939)

Here's Pedro in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAyrmm7vv0