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 5 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 5 months ago

Maybe the person asking went on inventing error handling