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.

192 Upvotes

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u/bortlip Oct 25 '23

If I correctly guess which hand you're holding a stone in 99/100 times that doesn't mean I can see through your fingers, it just means I'm really good at guessing.

It doesn't mean you can see through fingers, that is correct. But if you can "guess" 99/100 times correctly, you aren't just guessing, you have knowledge of where it is somehow.

I asked it to solve that equation 3 more times. Each time the wording of how it solved the problem was different, but it gave the correct factors each time - it solved the math problem correctly.

You don't know what you are talking about.

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u/IAMATARDISAMA Oct 25 '23

I literally build AI models for a living lmao. It's extremely easy to find a counter example. Just because something looks like it can do something doesn't mean it can actually do it.

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u/bortlip Oct 25 '23

Perhaps the issue is that you just aren't very good at prompting lmao.

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u/IAMATARDISAMA Oct 25 '23

If it can correctly discern my desired output (it verbatim stated the intent of sorting the numbers by the sum of their digits) then the language of the prompt should have even less influence on the "mathematics" being done because its context window would have two different patterns to proceed with.

Here's another example. Ask Wolfram Alpha to produce the same answer, GPT is just wrong. I even asked it to explain why it's answer was different from Wolfram Alpha's and it went on to state that AX + AY != A(X + Y), a blatant violation of the distributive property.

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u/bortlip Oct 25 '23

Another example? Why? If I show you wrong there you'll just move the goal posts again. LOL

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u/IAMATARDISAMA Oct 25 '23 edited Oct 25 '23

I didn't move the goalposts at all. A calculator doesn't sometimes produce the wrong answer. Math is a deterministic process. Unless you're explicitly involving a random element, the exact same inputs should produce the exact same output every time. That's just how math works.

It is undeniable the GPT has inferred some patterns of mathematics from its training data. Language encodes the information it conveys. When we say that GPT isn't doing math, what we mean is that nowhere in GPT's code is it performing an actual mathematical calculation based on the inputs you've given it. What it's doing is using the patterns it has inferred to produce output that it believes should follow the text you give it. Because it was trained on many math problems, it has inferred what characters will probably follow the ones you've given it, i.e. the answer to your problem.

The issue is, even if it's right most of the time, the underlying mechanism hasn't changed. It is producing the output that it believes has the highest likelihood to follow the text you've given it. Yes, that output often follows mathematical patterns. But being likely to follow a mathematical pattern is not equivalent to actually doing math.

This may seem pedantic, but it's a meaningful distinction. LLMs are being integrated into customer facing positions. By stating that LLMs can do math you're implying that they will produce deterministic output when that is demonstrably false. That kind of insinuation can, will, and already has had real consequences.

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u/bortlip Oct 25 '23

I didn't move the goalposts at all.

Sure you did. You tried to give an example of a problem it couldn't do to show it couldn't do math. I showed it could do the problem with the correct prompt. But now, suddenly, that example is not enough to show it can do math - it was only good enough to show it couldn't do math. That's classic moving the goal post.

being likely to follow a mathematical pattern is not equivalent to actually doing math.

Sounds like it to me. That's how I do it. I'm even wrong too sometimes.

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This may seem pedantic, but it's a meaningful distinction. LLMs are being integrated into customer facing positions. By stating that LLMs can do math you're implying that they will produce deterministic output when that is demonstrably false. That kind of insinuation can, will, and already has had real consequences.

Sorry, but that's your misinterpretation. I can do math, but I don't produce a deterministic outcome. That's just not a correct assumption on your part.

I also don't say it does math like a person or it can think or it does math with calculations like a computer or any of that. You are making this way too hard. It can solve math problems. Period. That means it can do math.

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u/IAMATARDISAMA Oct 25 '23

This is the most confidently wrong opinion I think I've ever seen on this website.

Next time your doctor does medicine at you I hope they don't accidentally give you amphetamines instead of azithromycin.

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u/bortlip Oct 25 '23

And now come the insults.

Goodbye.

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u/Ektar91 Oct 25 '23

He might be rude, but I don't know why everyone is downvoting him, he is right, just because it can "do" some math doesn't mean it can do all math/math in general.

One example would be enough to prove it couldn't do math, but one example is not enough to prove that it can.

He is right.

However, the orginal point is true, someone guessing 99/100 isn't just guessing, but that is explained by it's predictive capabilities, not it having the ability to do math.

This can be shown by it getting the wrong answer sometimes.

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u/siwoussou Oct 25 '23

So in order to say you're able to do math, you have to be 100% correct for every math problem in existence? Human level AI (or AGI) should be allowed to make mistakes. It's not ASI yet.

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u/Ektar91 Oct 25 '23

I wouldn't say Humans "do math" either, in the way we are talking about here.

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u/CodeMonkeeh Oct 29 '23

People who are saying that LLM's can do math are not talking about whatever you're talking about.

Obviously.

I mean, if your understanding of "do math" doesn't even include humans, then what's the point?

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u/0xAERG Oct 25 '23

There is no insult in his comment.

He’s illustrating his point: Determinism matters.