Talk:Ada Byron's notes on the analytical engine

Implied, Presumptuous Attribution Of Anti-AI Sentiment

On the other hand, proponents of Artificial intelligence would dismiss the above quote as nonsense...

Said dismissable quote begins "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything." It obviously refers specifically to the Analytical Engine. Any issue with a speculated inference is the problem of a presumptuous "proponent of Artificial intelligence [sic capitalized]." I recommend the text be made more accurate. It is possible to convey an AI proponent's distaste for the idea of the inability to originate extrapolated to computing machines in general, without putting words in Her Ladyship's mouth.

No extrapolation required. Since the Analytical Engine is Turing-complete, "the idea of the inability to originate" for it is equivalent to that for "computing machines in general". Leibniz 18:41, 26 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The equivalence of the Analytical Engine to a Universal Turing Machine, thus "computing machines in general", is only accurate if one uses the term Turing-complete in the lax sense without the requirements of unlimited storage and complete reliability. The Analytical Engine concept was not truly Turing-complete; it did not strictly classify as a true Universal Turing Machine. We cannot presume Her Ladyship to have intended the quote to refer to unerring faculties with unlimited storage, the functionality of "computing machines in general", or even finite computational power equal to that used by automated theorem provers. I admit that my assertion that the quote obviously refers specifically to the Analytical Engine is mistaken — one could reasonably imagine a more general application to have been intended. There is not enough evidence, however, to conclude so, and there is enough reason to conclude contrariwise, yet the text following the quote insinuates it still.

I'm saying it is possible to address that naturally conjured idea of the "inability to originate" without presumptive, libelous insinuation. How exactly, I guess I should figure out, then see if it flies. Raymond Keller 04:16, 28 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I find the comment under discussion questionabe as well. Have any proponents of AI dismissed Ada Byron's comment as nonsense or not? If so, who are they? If we can't say, then we shouldn't be putting this in the article. In any case, I seriously doubt any knowledgable proponent of AI would dismiss Byron's comment as nonsense--the comment is clearly not nonsense, but rather, on the interpretation being attributed to proponents of AI, makes clear sense and is just as clearly false. So at the very least, the comment should be changed to something like "would maintain that the development of computers and programs capable of proving novel mathematical theorems shows Byron's comment here to be strictly false."

The article raises the question of the correct interpretation of Byron's comment. Is it saying something like GIGO? Or is it saying something like "Computers can not be creative?" Are there serious, notable proponents of either or both of these interpretations? If so, these should be cited. Otherwise, perhaps the whole paragraph dealing with this comment should be left out. --The Sarcastic Fringehead

Regardless of the accuracy of the statement about AI, the statement is completely irrelevant to the article. It is not an article about Ada Lovelace's knowledge of AI theory. It is an article about history. One can make the argument that if the AI statement is irrelevant, the GIGO statement is also irrelevant, but GIGO is, effectively, computer culture, and, IMO, therefore relevant to a history article. Arguments about theoretical computer science are not. --- Bitt 18:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline confused?

There seems to be a mistake in this article. First paragrah reads:

In 1846 Charles Babbage was invited to give a seminar (...) , and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève in 1842

I may be wrong, but that seems a lot incorrect to me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.158.184.88 (talk • contribs) 15:58, 3 September 2006

First Programmer?

Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that Charles Babbage himself wrote some programs? I mean, it seems unlikely that the inventor of the programming language did not even write a single program to illustrate his ideas... 130.83.72.218 (talk) 15:20, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There is certainly considerable debate about how much input (if any) Ada had on this work. Reports vary from claims that she single-handedly invented all of programming - to claims that she merely wrote down things other people had already talked about. Sadly (because it made a great story), it's beginning to look like the latter. However, even if she did all that people have claimed of her - it's notable that all of her work - and all of Babbages were soon forgotten - and when computers finally became possible, the people who designed and programmed them had largely never heard of either Ada or Babbage. Hence, even if they were the first to think about these things, our present programming theory does not descend from their work in any way - the "father" of modern programming is probably Turing. SteveBaker (talk) 16:50, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Byron?

Convention seems to call for this article to be called "Ada Lovelace...," seeing as how that's what she's called in her own article. She may've been born Byron, but for clarity's sake let's call her what she was known as. Merpin (talk) 17:15, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]