Many years ago, an engineer explained to me the difference between human and computer behaviour. “If you give ?1 to young John and ask him to go and buy a loaf of bread, he will go to the shop, buy the loaf and bring it back to you with the change. If you could ask a computer to do the same thing, it would go to the shop, buy the loaf and wait there.”
Sadly, artificial intelligence has not progressed a great deal since then. It is true that many software programmes can now draw inferences from context and act accordingly; but when there is no context, we should not be surprised if the system cannot cope. And it is this lack of context-in this case, the failure to inform computers of a basic assumption about the date-that lies behind what is known as the year 2000 problem, or the millennium bomb.
out of dates
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