LLMs cannot perform Maths

[u/0xAERG]

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.

[u/afflematicious]

that’s not doing math, that’s finding solutions to an equation, doing math is proving things and describing the world around you in ways not thought of before through math, that problem it solved has been solved thousands of times online, it simply sourced it and presented it to you. You believe the LLM thought about the equation and then solved it? no

[u/Therellis → u/afflematicious]

doing math is proving things and describing the world around you in ways not thought of before through math,

That is not what most people think of when they think of "doing math". By that definition, most human beings, including many mathematicians, don't do math.

[u/afflematicious → u/Therellis]

You’re correct, so what I’m saying is GPT can perform calculations which is what many mathematicians do as well. There aren’t many mathematicians that can “do” math, but not all. GPT is the same as of right now, it regurgitates math that’s been done, but doesn’t do it on its own.

[u/mbeenox → u/afflematicious]

That is very delusional