human
I've been hearing about the Y2K problem. What exactly is it?
assistant
The Y2K problem refers to the potential for computer systems to malfunction due to a lack of knowledge about how dates are stored and displayed. For example, many computers were programmed to use two-digit year values (e.g. 00, 01, 02, etc.), but in the year 2000, some computers would not recognize these as valid years, leading to problems such as incorrect calculations or data storage errors.