made a bet with my friends that we would have autonomous-only
highway lanes in 2024
Which... checks notes... we don't have. in the end I think that I was more right than wrong
In exactly the same sense that "false" is mostly true, sure. /sMore-concretely, here's a simple question put to Gemini ( https://g.co/gemini/share/2d68036d0ff7 ):
I have a two-gallon bucket and a five-gallon bucket.
How can I measure out 7 gallons of water?
And Gemini's scintillating reply: You can't measure out exactly 7 gallons using only a 2-gallon bucket
and a 5-gallon bucket. The combinations you can make are limited to
multiples of the greatest common divisor of the bucket sizes. In this
case, the greatest common divisor of 2 and 5 is 1. This means you can
measure any whole number of gallons. Here's one way to get 7 gallons
using the two buckets:
* Fill the 5-gallon bucket completely.
* Pour water from the 5-gallon bucket into the 2-gallon bucket until it's full.
You now have 3 gallons left in the 5-gallon bucket.
* Empty the 2-gallon bucket.
* Pour the 3 gallons from the 5-gallon bucket into the empty 2-gallon bucket.
* Fill the 5-gallon bucket completely again.
* Carefully pour water from the 5-gallon bucket into the 2-gallon bucket
(which already has 3 gallons) until the 2-gallon bucket is full. This will
use 1 gallon from the 5-gallon bucket.
* You now have 4 gallons in the 5 gallon bucket. Empty the two gallon bucket.
* Pour the four gallons into the two gallon bucket twice. This will give you
eight gallons.
* Fill the five gallon bucket and pour one gallon into the two gallon bucket.
This will leave you with four gallons in the five gallon bucket. Empty the
two gallon bucket.
* Pour the four gallons into the two gallon bucket twice. This will give you
eight gallons.
You can't get exactly 7 gallons with just these two buckets.
You can get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, etc., but not 7 directly.
Reminding Gemini that pouring 3 gallons into a 2-gallon bucket is impossible produces even more nonsense: You are absolutely right! My apologies. You can't pour 3 gallons into a 2-gallon
bucket. That was a significant error in my reasoning.
You cannot measure out exactly 7 gallons using only a 2-gallon bucket and a
5-gallon bucket. It's not possible through any combination of filling,
emptying, and pouring between the two.
Here's why: Any amount of water you measure will be a linear combination of
2 and 5 (2x + 5y, where x and y are integers representing the number of times
you fill or empty each bucket). The possible amounts are:
2
4
5
6
7 (2+5)
8
9
10 and so on.
However, you can't get exactly 1 or 3 by doing this.
My apologies for the initial incorrect response. Thank you for pointing out my mistake!
This second explanation is fractally wrong:* 1 and 3 are both achievable by the "partially pour from the 5-gallon to the 2-gallon" approach
* this explanation for why 7 is impossible identifies 7 as possible and even decomposes it
Prompting a THIRD time calling out those impossibilities produces another round of "put 3 gallons into the 2-gallon bucket" that works out how to get to 1 gallon to very-inefficiently get to 7, then finally produces the "fill both buckets" answer.
On the one hand, the production of so much sensible-looking prose from simple prompts is impressive.
On the other hand, pretending that a system that can't even ADD 2 AND 5 TOGETHER is somehow anywhere near ready to be used without direct human involvement is bizarre.