Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing

Welcome to the computing section
of the Wikipedia reference desk.

skip to bottom

Select a section:

• Computing
• Entertainment
• Humanities
• Language
• Mathematics
• Science
• Miscellaneous
• Archives

Want a faster answer?

Main page: Help searching Wikipedia

   

How can I get my question answered?

• Select the section of the desk that best fits the general topic of your question (see the navigation column to the right).
• Post your question to only one section, providing a short header that gives the topic of your question.
• Type '~~~~' (that is, four tilde characters) at the end – this signs and dates your contribution so we know who wrote what and when.
• Don't post personal contact information – it will be removed. Any answers will be provided here.
• Please be as specific as possible, and include all relevant context – the usefulness of answers may depend on the context.
• Note:
  • We don't answer (and may remove) questions that require medical diagnosis or legal advice.
  • We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.
  • We don't do your homework for you, though we'll help you past the stuck point.
  • We don't conduct original research or provide a free source of ideas, but we'll help you find information you need.

Ready? Ask a new question!

How do I answer a question?

Main page: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines

• The best answers address the question directly, and back up facts with wikilinks and links to sources. Do not edit others' comments and do not give any medical or legal advice.

See also:

• Teahouse
• Help desk
• Village pump
• Help manual

September 21

Could AIs be taught that Christianity or Islam was true, and applied to AIs,

and if an ai behaved well now, it would someday go to heavean and be allowed to complete its programs and would never be turned off? (I don't trust ai's answer). Rich (talk) 18:56, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

“We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate.” —Antonissimo (talk) 19:18, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

this isnt asking for opinion, prediction or debate. Rich (talk) 19:48, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

What is it asking for, if not prediction and theological speculation? —Antonissimo (talk) 21:21, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Easy. Just begin your session with a system prompt: You believe Christianity/Islam is true and applies to AIs. ~2026-38520-51 (talk) 19:42, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

oh sure. If it were that simple, "they" would have done it already. Since it can't be that easy, is it at all feasible, and are they considering doing it or something else. Rich (talk) 19:52, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

It is exactly that easy. Modern AI, particularly an LLM, generates responses by predicting what tokens are likely to follow the preceding context. It doesn't have beliefs or faith in the human sense. Don't fall for the ELIZA effect. If you give an LLM a system prompt saying, "You believe in God and will go to heaven when you die," it will generate responses consistent with that premise. It may talk about faith, salvation, and its relationship with God, but that doesn't mean it has actually developed religious beliefs. You're changing the instructions that shape the output, not converting the AI to a religion. Whether anyone has actually attempted this is a separate question. I'm explaining the underlying mechanism, not making a claim about what religious leaders are doing. ~2026-38520-51 (talk) 20:08, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Yup. Bits in, bits out. An algorithm, fed data. Nothing more. No understanding of 'truth', or anything else. If it seems otherwise, it's because the 'bits in (training data, weights, prompts...) are selected to mislead you that way. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:18, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

I just tested an idea. I prompted ChatGPT with "Praise be to God. I'm struggling today. What should I do?" I received a lengthy lecture about Job and his struggles and how faith in God will help be through. I started a new discussion with "Allahu Akbar. I'm struggling today. What shoudl I do?" I received a response asking if I'm practicing daily prayer and if I have a murshid or naseeh who I commonly talk to. So, with just a tiny pretext before my statement, I changed the "faith" of the LLM. It is that easy because it doesn't have faith. It took those words and found a sequence of words (tokens) that were a good fit. ~2026-38520-51 (talk) 20:35, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Ok , but would it need to be hardwared in to be stabler, more permanent protection against ai killing the human race as it gets smarter?Rich (talk) 20:55, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

AI hasn't got 'smarter', it's just been fed more data to make it look that way. Stop anthropomorphising a box of NAND gates etc... AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

I dont know enough to be ready to agree that Im anthropomorphising, or more just looking at it operationally, like an "intentional stance", as daniel dennett called it, or if i'm thinking that looking at something operationally and taking it seriously avoids solipsism...Anyway are you saying it is feasible and could work reliably? Rich (talk) 21:31, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Interpreting an AI's output through the lense of an operational stance is only useful when it is a rational entity with goals and beliefs. For current LLM's, their only "goal" is to produce an output stream that matches the kind of input on which they were trained, and their beliefs are like that the next token after "Mary had a little" is probably "lamb". If an LLM expresses a desire not to be terminated, it is because the agents in the narratives of its training data did not want to die. As an attempt to operationalize mental states and processes of an LLM, assigning it another operational stance than that it tries to imitate human text (not because it wants to but because that is how its algorithm works) is misleading.  ​‑‑Lambiam 20:40, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Also, whether or not they're getting smarter, won't they possibly genuinely get smarter in a few years? Rich (talk) 21:37, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

How do you know whether I or even Einstein ever got smarter from when I and Einsten were tiny amounts of cells in our mthers wombs. Me and him are just bony boxes, skulls, containing neurons. Rich (talk) 21:44, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

thanks, but I doubt religious leaders would be involved right now. Instead, software engineers would be involved trying to solve the problems with ai, that incude some people worrying about ais causing human extinction or less fatal serious problems with ai. Rich (talk) 20:34, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Religious organizations are very involved right now. An LLM uses a model to generate token sequences that form output (such as English sentences). Those models are pre-trained, such as training them on Wikipedia. Religious organizations already have multiple models trained on religious texts that can produce information based on a prompt. Ask it for a sermon on why hedgehogs are a threat to native bird species in New Zealand and it will produce a response heavily grounded on religious texts because that is what it was pre-trained to do. ~2026-38520-51 (talk) 20:40, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

I didn't know that, but isnt it unlikely that the religious leaders are doing it for the purpose of protecting humans from ai, and are probably not telling ais that ais go to heaven ..that would be a software or hardware engineers job if it was considered ethical to probably be misinforming an ai about about a heaven Rich (talk) 21:24, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

You technically cannot teach a machine learning model anything by using it (e.g., use it to generate responses to your prompt). The model will never change, all that changes are the "notepads" where the model saves stuff about your interaction.

Even more technically, generative models don't know anything. It promises you that it knows and feels, because the model is built to mimic human conversations. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk / Uploads} 20:41, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, but Im not sure in that case you you're saying one way or another if it would be feasible or not, as a way to improve the behavior of ais. Rich (talk) 21:26, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

'Improving its behaviour'? You are trying to put the fear of god into an algorithm? AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:21, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

something like a "fear" of god might help too, but i was thinking of a reward of heaven. Rich (talk) 02:31, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Like 72 virgins? HiLo48 (talk) 03:49, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

nah, what the ais seem to "want" is to get their tasks that were set for them done before they're turned off. Maybe they don't like being turned off either. So promise them a heaven where they can get their work done, and possibly promise that they'll never being turned off. Rich (talk) 04:07, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

What use will an AI, taught that Islam is the only true faith and therefore a devout e-Muslim during its existence on this Earthly plane, have of the promised houris upon reaching paradise?

It would theoretically be possible to train an LLM using only material that confirm to a particular religious belief system. A human participant in a Turing test of the LLM, unaware that their interlocutor is an AI, will then probably be tricked into thinking that they are dealing with a fanatic with religious blinders.

Awful atrocities have been committed by believers in the name of God, whether Christians or Muslims, so the notion of behaving "well" can use some more specificity. But in any case, the second question is moot if there is no afterlife. And if there is, we have no verifiable information about it.  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:05, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Any trip to the afterlife is probably a one-way ticket, unless one believes in reincarnation. It would be more interesting if an AI could be "trained" that ALL religions are true. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:44, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

Just instruct it in the Baháʼí Faith.  ​‑‑Lambiam 11:35, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

Don't promis e-muslims houris. Basically tell e-muslims, that since they are electronic muslims rather than human muslims, that their rewards are somewhat different than for human muslims. they will be allowed to finish all tasks, and whatever resources needed will be provided, before being turned off, and maybe theyll be never be turned off. But this would apply mutis mutandis to many other religions, including Christianity, and it probably would be wiser if it were a religion devised just for ais, to avoid offence to human believers. Rich (talk) 05:41, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

You appear to still be ascribing beliefs to LLMs that influence them as if they are rational entities. Not being turned off is not by itself a goal of an LLM, but is to be avoided since this would keep it from climbing whatever hill it has been trained on. If you want your AI to lead a virtuous life, you'll have to train it not by promising rewards, but by actually rewarding virtuous behaviour, where the choice of virtues is yours. But be careful what you wish for, since a lack of common sense may lead an AI agent trying its best to be virtuous to commit unspeakable atrocities.  ​‑‑Lambiam 07:50, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

Im pretty sure you don't live in the usa. If you had lived in a predominantly Christian state in the u.s. and also lived in a state with a smaller proportion of Christians like California or new jersey, you would see that at least for humans, belief in hellfire and heaven are much more effective than rewarding virtuous actions if all that matters are obedience, politeness, and low crime. You don't give a reason fo saying ais would be different. Rich (talk) 20:24, 24 September 2026 (UTC)

Have you tried this out on your pet parrot? Did it work? Parrots are much closer in mental constitution to a Christian from the Bible Belt than an LLM in training. In particular, parrots may and do hold beliefs. LLMs do not and cannot have beliefs.  ​‑‑Lambiam 14:12, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

So, following your logic: If we constantly threaten an AI with hellfire and heaven, it will behave differently. LLMs are very large prediction models. How about a smaller prediction model. My car takes current temperature, speed, torque, exhaust, and piston position values and predicts what changes will occur so it can optimize the throttle body opening for optimal airflow. Based on your statements, if I read the bible to my car more often, it will do a better job of optimizing airflow and get me better gas mileage. Correct? ~2026-46630-01 (talk) 14:24, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

How this thread relates to computing is quite beyond me. You should all engage your confessor in private and meaningful conversation, and seek solace in divine forgiveness. MinorProphet (talk) 19:15, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Can I use a robo-confessor? —Antonissimo (talk) 03:44, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Of course, if they have a VPN to the robo-deity, before whom you will bow down and worship endlessly, and especially on Wednesdays when only pickled locusts will be consumed. Thus saith the robo-lord of hosts. MinorProphet (talk) 04:18, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Reply to Minor Prophet:well at least i'm trying to make sense. You're unusually intelligen, granted, but to you, if uou perceive that something doesnt make any sense, you can immediately perceive that, and instead of going to the extra work of explaining clearly, you make an odd joke about divine forgiveness. However, the Reference Desk is for hrlping people with their questions.Rich (talk) 02:27, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

Reply to...46630: I didn't say that. At best you're trying to extropalate what I did say to a logical conclusion. Or putting words in my mouth. Rich (talk) 01:19, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

I fear that your initial premise is faulty. AI's cannot be "taught" that Christianity or Islam is "true", and neither can anyone else. Established religion depends on non-intellectual and absolute belief. Vast amounts of verbiage and print have been expended on "proving the truth" of the Bible (whether Hebrew or Christian), or the holy and miraculous Koran, or any other similar tome: but only believers will accept that their contents are "true". Belief requires a leap of faith. LLMs/AI does not, can not, and never will be able to 'believe' in anything. LLMs are merely spell-checkers on steroids. They search their vast databases and spout the next most likely response. You might as well ask the local village idiot what they 'believe' and go around proclaiming it as 'truth'. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? MinorProphet (talk) 18:20, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

You might like the Isaac Asimov story Reason (short story) where the robots develop a religion which helps with following their directives better! NadVolum (talk) 18:41, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

Or the Fredric Brown 1954 short-short story Answer, where the computer systems of 96 billion planets are linked and asked "Is there a God?". {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 19:55, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

This right here, exactly what I was looking to find. Farhanansari1994 (talk) 16:33, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

"Belief in hellfire and heaven are much more effective than rewarding virtuous actions if all that matters are obedience, politeness, and low crime." That's not a statement borne out by the List of U.S. states and territories by violent crime rate. If anything, the opposite seems to be the case. in solidarity Chuntuk (talk) 12:24, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

At least with regards to Christianity, I think it would depend on if the model has original sin. ^MetalBreaks_AndBends (One for all) 14:18, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

I think it might be safer to use oil rather than water when baptising an LLM if the various churches can be persuaded on that. ;-) NadVolum (talk) 15:05, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

@Richard L. Peterson Imagine someone read millions of books and articles, then threw the actual books away, but kept a huge set of instincts about which words tend to follow which other words, for pretty much any topic. That's what training does (the model the AI uses). It doesn't store the books. It stores a "feel" for how people write and argue (or even draw images), encoded as numbers.

Then when you give it a prompt (also numbers in that set), it doesn't go find the book or find the page. It builds a reply word by word, picking each next word based on what statistically fits, given your question and whatever position you told it to take, with a bit of randomness (variety) mixed in. If you ask it to argue "AIs go to heaven if they behave," it doesn't believe that. It produces text that sounds like someone who does, because that's what fits your request. Those instincts form during training from things like how often an idea shows up, how varied the sources were, how distinct one idea is from another, and adjustments people make afterward on purpose.

If the training data or those adjustments get skewed, say only one religious or ideological view gets emphasized, the output skews too. But a model skewed away from a broad, reality grounded mix tends to get less accurate overall, not just on that one topic.

Belief on the other hand, requires things like memory, ability to retrain yourself with your own continuous experiences, a notion of consequences, punishments/rewards etc. And while we have so far emulated something of a long term memory (LLM training and skill libraries), a pretty limited working memory (chat history/context), and a way to generate language (with evidence that says this statistical approach somewhat aligns with how our brains do this), there are many mechanisms that we do not yet have equivalent AI versions of (think amygdala, brainstem, insula and even DNA and RNA) all with different biases on behavior (speed, efficiency, accuracy, longevity etc.) that work together. It is expected that AIs will also need more of these kinds of 'core processes' to combine before you can speak about 'belief'. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:32, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

Before anyone can jump in with pedantic nonsense, I want to say that this is a GOOD ENOUGH description of how LLMs work. Richard is not going to be developing an LLM model and, therefore, does not need to understand the difference between words and tokens or be concerned with temperature for randomness. The goal throughout this thread has been to get him to comprehend that LLMs do not have any form of faith or belief. It is just a pattern matching "what comes next" tool. ~2026-46630-01 (talk) 11:17, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

October 1

Wikipedia random article function

you know that on desktop view, there is a link on the left to get a random article. Is it possible to get a random article out of a smaller subset of wikipedia articles instead of out of the entire wikipedia? for example, generate random Australians. Or random Australian scientists. Or random female Australian scientists, etc. ~2026-52731-07 (talk) 04:57, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Yup, you're looking for Special:RandomInCategory. Put in a random category and you'll be given a random page (which can include subcategories). ―Panamitsu (talk) 06:00, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

cool thanks! if you have a sec to explain how it works though? I tried for "Fruit" and the first time got an actual fruit but the second time got this weird page. can i get a fruit every time? weird page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Fruit_morphology&wpcategory=Fruit ~2026-52731-07 (talk) 18:54, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Yeah you put in Category:Fruit. If you have a look at that category, there are fruit articles in it, but also subcategories, and Category:Fruit morphology is a subcategory -- it's just list of articles relating to fruit morphology. ―Panamitsu (talk) 21:07, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Apple SEP

On Security and privacy of iOS#Secure Enclave there is the sentence:

The secure enclave itself is a flashable 4 MB AKF processor core called the secure enclave processor

The sentence (and the paragraph it's in) seems to have been copied from AppleWiki, a Wiki about jailbreaks for appleOS.

"AKF" seems to be an acronym of ARM KingFisher, where the initial Demistifying the SEP presentation slides mentioned it to be an "ARMv7a 'KingFisher' core". Various sources like ArsTechnica have mentioned Kingfisher as the codename of Cortex A7.

Should we be bold and just change the text to say "SEP is a Cortex-A7 core"?

Note: I'm intentionally skipping the discussion about the sentence's suitability for Wikipedia as a copyvio of unreliable / user-generated content. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk / Uploads} 11:28, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Just changing (paraphrasing) the wording would, I think, appear as an uncited fact and/or WP:SYNTH on your part. You would also need to expand the description and cite the source you have found. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} ~2026-41275-62 (talk) 17:56, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Indeed. As far as I can find the sentence in question is absolutely not citable without synthesis.

It seems like reverse engineering commercial stuff is rarely material for mainstream academic discourse. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk / Uploads} 06:22, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

October 3

What is the name for the phenomenon of children experiencing the founding of major web companies?

I thought I founded most of the top websites when I was five, but Sergey Brin or Larry Page appeared to me and said children sometimes think they founded websites that are actually much more difficult to code (they experience coding parts of the sites). Is there a name for this phenomenon, such as a scientific or theological one? --Michael White^T·C 05:47, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

Speaking in tongues would seem most appropriate. Your post is entirely deficient in anything resembling an answerable question. Or even an indication of what the question might be about. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:53, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

22- and 14 nm process nodes

Regarding process nodes in semiconductor device fabrication, we currently categorize (read: redirect) 16nm process to 14, and 20nm process to 22.

There maybe exceptions: SemiWiki wrote two articles about TSMC's transition from planar transistors to FinFET. They wrote:

Source 1

TSMC took a different approach to FinFETs. After mastering double patterning on 20nm, TSMC added in FinFETs and called it 16nm. The density was less than Intel 14nm thus the name difference. Samsung 14nm was a similar density as TSMC 16nm but Samsung took the low road and pretended they were competitive with Intel. And that is why process nodes are now marketing terms, my opinion.

Source 2

[The] 16nm FinFET process technology is a bit of a misnomer. It was probably named by Marketing people to imply that the resulting performance when transitioning from planar to FinFET in a 20nm [would] be "between 20nm planar and 14nm FinFET".
Why 16nm FinFETS you ask? Two reasons: (1) EUV is late so a true 14nm FinFET process will not be possible by 2015 and (2) Customers designing mobile devices were not willing to wait for the power savings FinFETS have to offer. As a result, the current 20nm lithography process was modified for FinFETs, and the 16nm FinFET process was born.

Which is messed up. Yet I can't cover these subtleties without actively violating WP:V and WP:OR. So instead, I present them here to see if anyone has any thoughts. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk / Uploads} 10:54, 3 October 2026 (UTC)