LLMs are really fucking bad at math. They're trying to find the statistical close answer, not doing computation. It's rather mind-numbingly dumb.
Unfortunately a shockingly large number of people don’t get this… including my old boss who was running an AI-based startup 💀
Not even moderately helpful for printer questions.
What, your printer doesn't have a full keyboard under its battery? You've gotta get with the times my man.
80 year old grandmas trying to find the Ctrl and Alt buttons on her printer...
Did she look under the battery?
I read it as “A third of a third plus a third is a half.” Which makes sense to me. What an I missing?
It's wrong.
1/3 + (1/3 * 1/3) = 3/9 + 1/9 = 4/9. It's close though.However, one third plus one half of a third is correct.
1/3 + (1/2 * 1/3) = 1/3 + (1.5/3 * 1/3) = 1/3 + 0.5/3 = 1.5/3 = 1/2
one third plus one half of one third is one half.
Well no, but it's close enough in a lot of cases
Sure, but, what does that have to do with the AI answer? Wait.. Are you an AI?
I think thats an issue with AI, it has been so much trained on complex questions that now when you ask a simple one, it mistakes it for a complex one and answers it that way
The issue is it's an LLM. It puts words in an order that's statistically plausible but has no reasoning power.
It's auto-complete. It knows that "4" is the most common substring to follow "2 + 2" in its training. It's not actually doing addition.
Now ask it if a Third-of-a-Pound burger is bigger than a Quarter Pounder
Did Google train Gemini on American dataset?
Google's AI seems dumber than the rest, for example here's Kagi answering the same (using Claude):
edit: typoed question originallyPerhaps Google's tried to make it run too cheaply - Kagi's one doesn't run unless you ask for it, and as a paid product it'll have different priorities.
There are two meanings being conflated here.
"1/3 more" can mean "+ 1/3" or "* (1 + 1/3)“.
So "1/3 more than 1/3" could be 2/3 or 4/9, but not 1/2.
Instead 1/2 is 1/2 more than 1/3, not 1/3 more. That's the meme I've seen go around recently.
Yes, and the Google AI response is correct (and quite clear) in what it says.edit: Thanks Batman. I mean that Google's understanding of the question is logical (although still the maths is wrong as you say (now I've re-read you)) and its answer explained the angle it was answering from.However, I think the reasonable assumption for the intention behind the question is relative to a whole. I had third of a pizza, and now I have an extra sixth of a pizza. It's subtle, but that's the kind of thing AI falls down on.
Kagi has Claude built in? I've been using it for a year and didn't know that.
This is why Kagi is a great company.
Nobody is getting LLM functionality shoved in their faces unless they wanted to.
It tries to auto-determine when to trigger, but you can explicitly trigger it by putting a question mark after your query.
LLMs can't math
Ironically the one thing computers are normally good at.
yea
The math is correct. One third (2/6) + half of one third (1/6) = one half (3/6, aka 1/2).
The Internet is very confidently stupid.
It didn't mention halving a third.
(1/3) +(1/2)(1/3) = 1/2
Math checks out from this end.
"a half is one-third more than a third" should mean either
1/3 + 1/3 = 1/2
Or
1/3 + (1/3 × 1/3) = 1/2
Neither of which is true.
1/3 more than 1/3 is 4/9. What you wrote is 1/2 more than 1/3, not 1/3 more of it.
This is very clearly an example of bad AI, but maybe it was trying (and failing) to convey this?
Basically, 1/3 + 1/9 + 1/27 + 1/81 + ... + 1/3^n = 1/2.
Probably not. But maybe.
I’m thinking it’s trying to say:
(2/6) + (1/6) = (3/6) = (4/6) - (1/6)
But either in “colloquial English for those who want to give other people aneurysms” or “colloquial English for those trying to sound smarter but aren’t”
Basically that the degree of difference between a half and a third is the same degree of difference between a half and two thirds- and that degree of difference is “one part”.
Or ⅓ + (⅓*½) = ½
1/3 is 1/2 of 2/3
"42"
"The answer to life the universe and everything is 42!?"
"Yes, I checked it quite thoroughly."
...
"But what was the actual question?"
Alternatively, garbage in, garbage out.
considering where the garbage came from, maybe we should stop shitposting :)
That's like having google make a pizza with everything in my fridge then they complain that I also keep the dog's food in there.
Maybe the intent is to make people even dumber. It’s just misinformation all the way down.
Wouldn't even be surprised at this point. It seems the system is intentionally designed to discourage critical thinking and apparently knowing how to do math properly is too close for comfort now.
Someone I know had an old friend on their Facebook timeline say that schools should be reformed and don’t need classes like algebra. Then they proceeded to list fields kids could receive training for instead… and all of them required math of some sort.
I don't even look at the AI result. I scroll right past. That's the thing, if it's bullshit 50% of the time, and you can't always tell like you can here, then it's bullshit 100% of the time, and it's useless, just taking up screen real estate.
Oh. I just noticed the extra word in the search, which might be throwing off the LLM trying to understand it.
I asked ChatGPT these questions and got sensible answers.
How much more is one half than one third?
[subtraction answer: 1/6 more]
That's one possibility, but what about the other way to interpret that question?
[ratio answer, but expressed as "1.5 times as much" rather than "1/2 more"]
