No, they were literally asking if the machine was able to return the right result if the person didn't enter it ccorrectly. You know, like how some people expect search engines and AI to give them the answer they want even if they use the wrong words.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Oh like when you type "population of tenton" and it returns "Did you mean Trenton? That population is XYZ"

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, except in the case of Babbage's machine they were asking if putting 1235 instead of 1234 would give the same answer.

Search engines work that way because of having large large datasets and pattern recognition that can suggest based on typos. Calculators don't do that.

[–] saimen@feddit.org 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah but calculator back then was a profession. So if suddenly a machine can replace a complete profession it's at least conprehensible to assume it can do more than it actually can. It's basically the same with AI right now. There is this "overshoot" of what is expected from a new paradigm shifting technology. Similar to how people 100 years ago thought there will be flying cars by now.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Helicopters are flying cars.

It is possible that the question was intended to be about human error checking prior to starting the process of calculating, like noticing a lack of a decimal on a monetary number in a data set, and Babbage misunderstood. That would be a valid question, but isn't how the quote is phrased.

[–] saimen@feddit.org 4 points 10 months ago

Maybe the person asking went on inventing error handling

[–] tyler@programming.dev 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No I meant Teton.

[–] tomiant@programming.dev 4 points 10 months ago

Big ones.