There's obviously some ambiguity to it considering we are two humans discussing this with a claimed discrepancy between English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia, but your conclusion is still that the AI is spitting nonsense.
There is zero ambiguity under German as law as to who was a Chancellor and who was not. Not a matter of wikipedia etc.
The way to be Chancellor is through article 63 of the Grundgesetz, while Scheel was put into the caretaker role via article 69. This explains it a bit https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizekanzler_(Deutschland) - Scheel was only taking on the function, not the office.
This kind of giving some machine the benefit of the doubt when in fact there is zero ambiguity is really a path that makes me think we will have mostly machines designed for marketing and other non-critical things.
When you need to bring up article 63 and 69 of the Grundgesetz to prove that the claim is ludicrous, maybe the reasonable thing to say instead is "I understand why you might think that".
I don't think it bungled it and I don't agree that there's a clear ground truth here. Quite the opposite: you've only convinced me that the semantic ambiguity is real. It's like debating whether interim CEOs should be included in a list of CEOs.
You are, of course, free to ignore German law and its definitions, but that doesn't change the fact who actually was a Chancellor and who was not. Chancellor is a very well defined role.
No. I think the problem starts with that the role Scheel had isn't given a name in the article of the basic law that creates it.
So either need to be fully descriptive (e.g., something like fulfilling the functions of the Chancellor, while not ever having the office) or it will be also open to being misunderstood.
The issue here really is that the German succession doesn't ever transfer the office, but only the function (which is different to the US, for example). So here Scheel followed Brandt, but not into the office. Only someone having the office is a Chancellor and there is a specific way to that office.
I see, so when you said the machine is a moron for getting it wrong, the English editor isn’t a moron for getting it wrong due to ambiguity in the law?
I think there’s also a functionally useful way to describe someone’s role as what it functionally is even if it’s not legally that. You’re point is super well taken, if the machine is intended to be a fact oracle, it’s awfully loose and adds a lot of interpretation in areas of ambiguity.
I would say IMO that’s specifically the power of these machines. An awful lot of human endeavor doesn’t require literalism but semantic approximation and interpretation that machines were literally incapable of. Its weird language is enough to achieve that, but I think it’s overly restrictive to assert a broad lack of utility in critical systems. An awful lot of critical systems actually need more “probabilistic” interpretation than literal fact oracling.
Maybe when read in a strictly narrow sense it is even a good translation. Practically, it is more of a caretaker role (especially in the case of Scheel here), though, and interpreting into the phrasing can be dangerous. Naming things that aren't named is always tough, and even tougher when needing to go from one language to another.
I'd agree that often things human are more loose but when there are narrow definitions ignoring them is dangerous.
> Chancellor of Germany, Acting, 7 May 1974 – 16 May 1974
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scheel