Technology @beehaw.org trashhalo @beehaw.org 1 yr. ago

[Fortune] Over just a few months, ChatGPT went from correctly answering a simple math problem 98% of the time to just 2%, study finds

Researchers found that ChatGPT's performance varied significantly over time, showing "wild fluctuations" in its ability to solve math problems, answer questions, generate code, and do visual reasoning between March and June 2022. In particular, ChatGPT's accuracy in solving math problems dropped drastically from over 97% in March to just 2.4% in June for one test. ChatGPT also stopped explaining its reasoning for answers and responses over time, making it less transparent. While ChatGPT became "safer" by avoiding engaging with sensitive questions, researchers note that providing less rationale limits understanding of how the AI works. The study highlights the need to continuously monitor large language models to catch performance drifts over time.

73 comments

My understanding is this claim is basically entirely false. The tests done by these researchers had some glaring errors that when corrected, show gpt-4 is getting slightly better at math, if anything. See this video that describes some of the issues: https://youtu.be/YSokS2ivf7U

TL;DR The researchers gave new GPT questions from two different pools. It's no surprise they got worse answers.
- You shouldn't need to be a prompt engineer just to get answers to math questions that are not blatantly wrong. I believe the prompts are included in the paper so that you don't have to guess if they were badly formatted.
  
  The problem is they aren't comparing apples to apples. They asked each version of GPT a different pool of questions. (Edited my post to make this clear).
  
  Once you ask them the same questions, it becomes clear that ChatGPT isn't getting worse at math, because it has been terrible all along.
  
  “Prompt Engenieer” is one of the funniest thinks that have happened in the recent history of the world.
  
  “Learn to ask questions to a prediction algorithm and get rich! Is the work of the future! Software engineers and writers will lose their jobs, but asking questions is an evergreen field!”
  
  Dude, if the algorithm only understand correctly formatted input is a parser. We have those.
- came here to say the same
For me it’s like using a coffee machine as a stopwatch, and then complaining that it doesn’t always give the exact time lapsed.
- This is the best comparison I have ever read my eyes just peaked reading that thank you very much!
- If it's a coffee machine that's so advanced it was uninaginable a decade ago, you'd expect it not to perform worse over time.
  
  My point was that a coffee machine is designed to make coffee, not to keep track of time. Maybe it always takes roughly the same amount of time to make a coffee, and so someone uses it as a proxy stopwatch. But it can very well suddenly take more or less time, without anything being wrong about it – maybe different coffee brands, cleaned pipes, or whatnot.
  
  ChatGPT is an algorithm designed to parrot language, not to perform mathematical reasoning based on logic rules.
I think this might be what stops AI from taking over as much as people fear. If I was a business owner I wouldn't want to put my trust in a black box if I can pay someone to ensure it works exactly to my specification
- As someone getting an MBA that hates the idea of labor being displaced by AI, if I were an unethical business owner that treated labor as a cost to minimize, I'd use AI to generate content that's "good enough" and use fewer people to make it exactly to my specification.
  
  You uh… you might have chosen the wrong field if you hate displacing labour
  
  You know, I wouldn't care about being replaced by a machine, as long as I get UBI. Then I could just do what I like to do and wouldn't need to care whether I actually make money with it.
  
  I think that's what part of the Hollywood writers strike is about. AI generating "good enough" scripts, and studios shelling a few peanuts for some writers to finalize them.
  
  And that's exactly how it will be used
Thanks for the share.

I prefer the archive.ph link, but could you also put the source in the title?
- Good call. I'll be sure to do that in the future
  
  You are allowed to edit titles on Lemmy :)
I apologize for my naivity.

but could openAI just introduce a flag into the decoder to highlight math questions and ports/transforms those math questions into a simple bash script to calculate the result instead of letting the LLM nodes "calculate" the formula?

I mean this would like straightforward give correct results. ChatGPT has a similar issue with counting as its nodes do not get the numerics. however a pc is capable of that. it would just rely on the encoder for parsing the question, and not going further the GPT route.
- Yes. Apparently they are working on integrating wolfram alpha into ChatGPT. Then it would be able to solve a lot of math problems posed.
  
  that sounds incredibly powerful.
I'm ok with this.
I've found it making up "facts" when I query it. I thought I was doing something wrong, but apparently, it's just changing the way it works for some reason.
- Same. Now I'm only using search engines that don't have it.
  
  It's not changing the way it works. It's making up shit when it doesn't know.
  
  And that's how AI works, it's all probability. It's not answering 2+2, there's a probability that the answer is 4 and it chooses that. If something convinces it that it should be 5 it'll start answering 5
  
  If I wanted that I could just ask my daughter. She makes up shit all the time when she doesn’t actually know.
  
  Perplexity.ai has been a solid addition to my internet searches.
To be honest I noticed a drop in quality of code generation via prompt by ChatGPT.

Still useful. Especially for boilerplate nonsense getting projects started. But it's ability to understand complexities in code dropped drastically.
Its summer break, probably just distracted.

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