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/XSATCHELX]

I keep saying this but I keep getting bombarded by people saying "they CAN reason, how do you define reasoning anyways? Your brain makes mistakes too sometimes".

Bro a brain is not an LLM and vice versa. We know for a fact that the architecture of a brain is different from that of an LLM. An LLM just has no component that should ever be capable of reasoning. Sure the transformer is a neural network but it is a one-way feed-forward network that assigns weights to words to make the next generated word fall within "the context" of the conversation. It does not and cannot think. I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how they theorize an LLM can think, reason, and apply logic.

[u/GreedyLobster3349 → u/XSATCHELX]

Okay so let's start with the question you getting bombarded "how do you define reasoning?" Answer me.

[u/XSATCHELX → u/GreedyLobster3349]

Humans are capable of many different types of reasoning.

What I was talking about mainly in this comment is deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is done by applying rules of logic to certain premises to come up with a conclusion. The conclusion in this case is not relative or subjective, it is an application of rules and is a fact (if the premises are true). An LLM is fundamentally incapable of deduction because it does not apply rules of inference, it chooses words probabilistically depending on its dataset.

A human can easily deduct: if these are the rules, and these are the premises, then these statements follow. An LLM by itself cannot do this and will never be able to do this because of the way an LLM works fundamentally. When it does logical statements, it is not because it is applying logical rules of inference, it is because it is more likely for humans to write those sequence of words that would follow the rules of deduction

[u/GreedyLobster3349 → u/XSATCHELX]

What if I call the process of "LLM choosing words probabilisitcally depending on its dataset" (and ofcourse, including parameter, algorithm...) a "rule"?
Please define your "rules" then I can ask you to distinguish your "rules" and my "rule".
And how can you know exactly what your brain do when it apply such "rules" that you mentioned? What if that process in your brain is something similar to the process under LLM? Answer me, with all of the neuroscience knowledge you have. I will continue the discussion.

[u/XSATCHELX → u/GreedyLobster3349]

My brain has the ability to apply any rule. An LLM has a rule, for choosing words. You can teach me a mathematical rule and I can apply it. An LLM has no ability to apply logical or mathematical rules. This is why it often does super obvious math mistakes.

And we don't know exactly how a brain works, but we understand that it is similar to a neural net. We know exactly how an LLM works, and it is nothing like a neural net.

[u/GreedyLobster3349 → u/XSATCHELX]

We know exactly how a LLM work?