[jbritton]

I recently saw an article about LLMs and Towers of Hanoi. An LLM can write code to solve it. It can also output steps to solve it when the disk count is low like 3. It can’t give the steps when the disk count is higher. This indicates LLMs inability to reason and understand. Also see Gotham Chess and the Chatbot Championship. The Chatbots start off making good moves, but then quickly transition to making illegal moves and generally playing unbelievably poorly. They don’t understand the rules or strategy or anything.

[leptons]

Could the LLM "write code to solve it" if no human ever wrote code to solve it? Could it output "steps to solve it" if no human ever wrote about it before to have in its training data? The answer is no.

[chpatrick]

Could a human code the solution if they didn't learn to code from someone else? No. Could they do it if someone didn't tell them the rules of towers of hanoi? No.

That doesn't mean much.

[naasking]

> This indicates LLMs inability to reason and understand.

No it doesn't, this is an overgeneralization.

[tim333]

I think if you tried that with some random humans you'd also find quite a few fail. I'm not sure if that shows humans have an inability to reason and understand although sometimes I wonder.