I've been stunned by how many smart people talk so casually about LLMs becoming better at math. Do they just forget that a calculator that is wrong 1% of the time is a de facto calculator that doesn't work and should not be used?
Could they be referring to this?
"Advanced version of Gemini with Deep Think officially achieves gold-medal standard at the International Mathematical Olympiad" https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/advanced-version-of-ge...
If you're curious, check out how mathematicians like Robert Ghrist or Terence Tao are using LLMs for math research, both have written about it online repeatedly (along with an increasing number of other researchers).
Apart from assisting with research, their ability on e.g. math olympiad problems is periodically measured and objectively rapidly improving, so this isn't just a matter of opinion.
Yes LLMs suck at calculating stuff. However they can manipulate equations and such, and sometimes impressively so.
I've been stunned by how many smart people talk so casually about how because LLMs aren't perfect, they therefore have no value. Do they just forget that nothing in the world is perfect, and the values of things are measured in degrees?
Not to mention now you have the compounded problem of your mistakes plus the calculator’s mistakes.
But you seem to have missed the main point I was making. See? Another error. They're everwhere! ;)
Ah, but whose error? ;)
You really could’ve done without this bit.
Yes, it's not 1%, but the argument is about them being imperfect devices. It's not a horrible thing to start with the presumption that calculators are not perfect.