How to convince a machine that two plus two equals five

April 9, 2017 by Lucian Mogosanu

(Disclaimer: the alternative to these facts is unbearable.)

They say that humans are smarter than machines, but that a machine can never -- at least for some particular meanings of never -- go wrong, while a human could easily be stupid enough to believe that two plus two equals five -- at least for some particular meanings of two, plus and five.

But that is obviously a gross misunderstanding. One can as easily convince a machine that two plus two equals five, as follows. Define a function called "my plus", which takes as arguments two items a and b, whose implementation is the following. If a is two and b is two, then equals five; else equals whatever the machine implicitly understands a plus b means in the machine's narrow view of the world. See? easy.

But then, how to convince a human that two plus two equals five? In precisely the same way.

Machines, ever the perfect slaves.

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3 Responses to “How to convince a machine that two plus two equals five”

  1. [...] Computer! Ever the perfect slave. You do exactly what you're told -- too bad some of them don't know how to talk to you and most of [...]

  2. [...] humanity in their hands? or what is it? Regardless, the machines placed in their stead can easily two-plus-two when instructed, and they won't even ask for food. Moving the problem in the domain of automation [...]

  3. [...] be wrong -- and if I am, please, do feel free to correct me -- but that's the only result that my two-plus-two arrived at so far, and here it is, in more paragraphs than I'd have [...]

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