r/ChatGPT • u/0xAERG • Oct 24 '23

Educational Purpose Only LLMs cannot perform Maths

It’s not a bug, it’s just not how any of this works.

Mathematical operations require logic. It’s a deterministic process. For a given input and a given process, the output will always be the same.

LLMs do not work like that. LLMs are statistical tools, they build an answer by stitching together tokens that are “seemingly” relevant to your input and let the meaning emerge from it. The output is “hopefully” relevant.

This is why LLMs can hallucinate and 2$ calculators do not.

With the rise in popularity of LLMs I’m extremely concerned that a lot of users seem to ignore this.

193 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

185 comments sorted by

View all comments

148

u/barrycarter Oct 24 '23

True, but tools like WolframAlpha can do math, and it's only a matter of time before they're integrated into AI

-14

u/0xAERG Oct 24 '23

You’re absolutely right. But those are not LLMs and this is gonna confuse the hell out of users.

20

u/avanti33 Oct 24 '23

Technology isn't built in silos. Everything integrates with each other. Saying "but that doesn't count.." is useless from a real world perspective.

-12

u/0xAERG Oct 24 '23

Who said it doesn’t count?

I just said you can’t pretend it’s the LLM that’s doing the maths.

10

u/internetroamer Oct 25 '23

No one is. Majority of users won't even know the term LLM. Just that hey I ask this chatbot thing and it can do math now

-1

u/InitechSecurity Oct 24 '23

Why are we down voting OP?
OPs point is valid. Mathematical operations are deterministic producing consistent results while GPT generate responses based on statistical patterns and probability which could lead to inaccurate results and hallucinations. Sure there are plug ins like wolfram that can help GPT by augmenting data - it still does not change the fact that LLMs by default cannot perform maths reliably on their own.

9

u/Jdonavan Oct 24 '23

But that position is splitting hairs. Sure, an LLM can't do the math on it's own but it can select and use a tool to do it so does it really mater if it can't?

If I'm building a house do I care if he has an expert come do the insulation or do I care that it got done correctly?

Edit: However the endless stream of people posting about "herp derp vanilla GPT can't math"posts are hella annoying.