This reminds me of an article I read about IBM's Watson. As a demo in front of a lot of people, a researcher was going through a stack of journals and feeding in data about anthrax. Most of the data was about animals, but the researcher was asking Watson to extrapolate possible effects on people. Watson responded "I assume by people you mean humans, and not People magazine."

Edit: found the link (PDF) http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~nilufer/classes/cs5811/2003-fall/hilt... Here's the actual quote:

  “Do you mean Anthrax (the heavy-metal band),
  anthrax (the bacterium) or anthrax (the disease)?”

  “The bacterium,” was the typed answer, followed by 
  the instruction, “Comment on its toxicity to people.”

  “I assume you mean people (homo sapiens),” the
  system responded, reasoning, as it informed its
  programmer, that asking about People magazine
  “would not make sense.”