Fermion
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
The other day I was playing around with Google's Gemini while looking for a new book to read. I had been frustrated
with Amazon's book search (it many times will put sponsored books at the top of your search, the same books on EVERY page, and other things that bug me as well).
Anyway, somehow the thought came into my head to see if there were any historical fiction or alternate history fiction with Ada Lovelace as the main character (there really are not, someone needs to do a Netflix series). I came across a book about early computer/calculator history and was reading about George Stibitz constructing a electromechanical computer using telephone relays (first in his kitchen in 1937, then at Bell Labs). Obviously you can use relays to represent logic gates so it is pretty straightforward to made adders, etc.
I then asked when relays were discovered and it was Joseph Henry, 1835. This was right in Babbage's time period.
This is where the argument started. I asked Gemini if it was possible Babbage could have used relays to construct his difference engine or even his analytical engine (a almost computer design never built but which Ada wrote a program for to calculate Bernoulli numbers...amazing lady and she was conversing with Babbage at age 17!).
We then proceeded in a back and forth discussion about how this or that would not have worked, from the ability to produce consistent drawn copper wire, to metal stamping, discussions of mercury and reed relays, funding. I forgot for a few minutes I was talking to a chatbot that isn't really AI at all. How can it come up with counterarguments to topics like this?
with Amazon's book search (it many times will put sponsored books at the top of your search, the same books on EVERY page, and other things that bug me as well).
Anyway, somehow the thought came into my head to see if there were any historical fiction or alternate history fiction with Ada Lovelace as the main character (there really are not, someone needs to do a Netflix series). I came across a book about early computer/calculator history and was reading about George Stibitz constructing a electromechanical computer using telephone relays (first in his kitchen in 1937, then at Bell Labs). Obviously you can use relays to represent logic gates so it is pretty straightforward to made adders, etc.
I then asked when relays were discovered and it was Joseph Henry, 1835. This was right in Babbage's time period.
This is where the argument started. I asked Gemini if it was possible Babbage could have used relays to construct his difference engine or even his analytical engine (a almost computer design never built but which Ada wrote a program for to calculate Bernoulli numbers...amazing lady and she was conversing with Babbage at age 17!).
We then proceeded in a back and forth discussion about how this or that would not have worked, from the ability to produce consistent drawn copper wire, to metal stamping, discussions of mercury and reed relays, funding. I forgot for a few minutes I was talking to a chatbot that isn't really AI at all. How can it come up with counterarguments to topics like this?
