My friend James had one of those moments where you ask a question that’s obvious to you—and to a computer, well, isn’t:

Ha ha, okay very funny DuckDuckGo.

To explain the joke: James searched for “base64 encode image”—looking for information on how to encode an image using base64. Instead, the search engine took the query literally, as a command, and returned the base64-encoded version of the word “image”.

Humans know what we meant. Computers know what we said.

This brought to mind an anonymous aphorism I’ve had in my head for nigh-on 40 years. It’s as relevant today as when I first heard it:

I really hate this damn machine

I wish that I could sell it.

It never does quite what I want

But only what I tell it.

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, now machines can do neither.^[1]

(A more verbose version of the query—“how to base64 encode an image”—skips the artificially intelligent response in favor of actually useful links. That makes the original version one of those instances where brevity bites you. John Siracusa had a good take on this on ATP 445. Ironically, his suggestion—ask your question using complete sentences—works even better today with LLMs.)