Museum mistranslation turns ancient Chinese math into 3rd-century Latent Dirichlet Allocation
blelbach · x · 2026-10-19
A museum display panel about the ancient Chinese math text The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art has gone viral for a hilarious mistranslation: classical algorithms like "cuifen" and "junshu" were rendered in English as "Latent Dirichlet allocation" and "complex Latent Dirichlet allocation"—implying Confucians invented LDA in the third century.
The mistranslation, likely machine-translation gone wrong, maps ancient Chinese math terms onto modern ML jargon, making it a perfect AI-circle laugh.
More from Fun
- Researcher jokes: figure out PMS before inventing superintelligence — kyliebytes · 2026-10-19
- Supermarket AI meal planner suggested 'recipe' that would create chlorine gas — ArtificialOther · 2026-10-19
- AI redraws the classic "Captain, it's Monday" meme with a glowing AI character — JasonBotterill · 2026-10-19
- Chinese blogger builds working electric hoverboard with 10 motors and real-time AI voice coaching — churchkey · 2026-10-19
- Gary Marcus posts Sam Altman photo comparison: 'can't tell the difference' — GaryMarcus · 2026-10-19
- Gemini coding agent's sandbox has no outbound internet, can't even git clone — steren · 2026-10-19