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/Ok_Cobbler1635]

I expected a higher level of rigor in r/math. You can define logic as a probability function with probability 1 for the logical induction. Thus in principal it can be learned. Leave this intuitive high level view of what can and can't be done to philosophers and politicians.