[Kiro]

It says "geschäftsführender Bundeskanzler".

Even on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancellor_of_Germany he's listed as "Vice Chancellor Walter Scheel served as acting Chancellor from 7 May to 16 May 1974" between 4 and 5.

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.

[RandomLensman]

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.

[Kiro]

He's also included in this list between 4 and 5: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeskanzler_(Deutschland)#De...

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".

[RandomLensman]

You can say "I consider Scheel to be Chancellor", but that isn't the same as Scheel having been a Chancellor.

I honestly don't understand why in situations with a clear ground truth there is a need to debate and why we would want machines to bungle that.

[Kiro]

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.

[RandomLensman]

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.