Looked at a certain way it's incredible that a 40-odd year old comedy sci-fi series is so accurate about the expected quality of (at least some) AI output.
replyWhich makes it even funnier.
It makes me a little sad that Douglas Adams didn't live to see it.
Also check out "The Great Automatic Grammatizator" by Roald Dahl for another eerily accurate scifi description of LLMs written in 1954:
replyhttps://gwern.net/doc/fiction/science-fiction/1953-dahl-theg...
"Can write a prize-winning novel in fifteen minutes" - that's quite optimistic by modern standards!
reply42 wasn't a low quality answer.
replyThe joke revolves around the incongruity of "42" being precisely correct.
Should have used a better platform. So long and thanks for all the fish.
replydeleted
replyYes and then no one knows the prompt!
replyMaybe you should have asked a better question. :P
replyWhat do you get if you multiply six by nine?
reply67?
reply54?
replySome one should let Douglas Adams know the calculation could have been so much faster if the machine just lied.
replyI think Adams was prescient, since in his story the all powerful computer reaches the answer '42' via incorrect arithmetic.
replyThe Bistromathics? That's not incorrect, it's simply too advanced for us to understand.
reply“What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”
reply(One) source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/1mjudsm/comment/n7d...
You also have the problem that if the both the ultimate answer to life the universe and everything, and the ultimate question to life the universe and everything, are know at the same time in the same universe. The universe is spontaneously replaced with a slightly more absurd universe to ensure that both the question and answer become meaningless.
replyTo quote the message from the universes creators to its creation “We apologise for the inconvenience”. Does seem to sum up Douglas Adam’s views on absurdity of life.
Ok, my Hitchhiker-foo was too weak, thanks!
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