Person/Simon Willison/Blog/25/07/02 A quote from Charles Babbage

• A quote from Charles Babbage

  • 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. #Quote from Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, 1864
    

  • My Note
    • I've heard questions/zingers from skeptics and detractors at AI EdTech events that remind me of this, e.g. "how can you prove that AI won't give the wrong answer to students?" Are probability distributions really as unintuitive as exponential growth for average humans?