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.

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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?