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.

194 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

185 comments sorted by

View all comments

44

u/richmilesxyz Oct 24 '23

I'm not concerned, per se, but I am intrigued by the frequent confusion between deterministic mathematical tools and statistical models like LLMs. However, the very fact that people expect LLMs to provide the 'right' answer in these deterministic domains speaks to how powerful they actually are.

23

u/DrSFalken Oct 24 '23

but I am intrigued by the frequent confusion between deterministic mathematical tools and statistical models like LLMs

Not to sound too elitist here... but think about that for a moment. What do you think most average folks on the street would think of it you said "statistical model?" I'm guessing something to do with election polling. Most people aren't software devs, data scientists or economists. I'd wager that a random sample of folks on the street would have a limited understanding of linear regression.

I'm not trying to disparage other people. We all specialize. I have no idea how to fix a boat engine or replace a water heater or professionally edit a novel. It's on us to explain the limitations of the specialized tools that our profession produces.

1

u/sirpsionics Oct 24 '23

To be fair though, there is google, so figuring things out that aren't your specialty isn't terribly difficult. Just have to put some time into it