Charles Babbage, inventor of the first mechanical computer, has a particular quote that's always stuck with me:
"On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
Babbage made this observation almost 200 years ago, and he'd certainly say the same thing about modern AI proponents who expect that feeding all of the internet into an over-glorified autocomplete will produce factual results.
