[luke0016]

> reasoning ability should enable them to handle numbers of arbitrary size, just as it enables humans to do so, given some pencil and paper.

Or given a calculator. Which it's running on. Which it in some sense is. There's something deeply ironic about the fact that we have an "AI" running on the most technologically advanced calculator in the history of mankind and...it can't do basic math.

[novok]

This is like saying it's ironic that an alternator in a car cannot combust gasoline when the gasoline engine is right beside it, even though the alternator 'runs' on the gasoline engine.

[luke0016]

Or similarly having a gasoline engine without an alternator and making the observation that there's an absurdity there in that you're generating large amounts of energy, yet aren't able to charge a relatively small 12V battery with any of it. It's a very practical and natural limitation, yet in some sense you have exactly what you want - energy - you just can't use it because of the form. If you step back there's an amusing irony buried in that. At least in my humble opinion :-)

[benjiro]

Thing is, a LLM is nothing but a prediction algorithm based upon what it trained. So it missing basic calculator functionality is a given. This is why tool usage is more and more a thing for LLMs. So that the LLM can from itself use a calculator for the actual math parts it needs. Thus increasing accuracy ...

[DrewADesign]

If they were selling LLMs as “LLMs” instead of magic code-writing, answer-giving PhD replacements, the lack of basic arithmetic capability would be a given… but they aren’t. Judging a paid service using their own implied claims is perfectly reasonable.

[throwup238]

Why is it a given? The universal approximation theorem should apply since addition is a continuous function. Now whether the network is sufficiently trained for that is another question but I don’t think it's a given that a trillion parameter model can’t approximate the most basic math operations.

I think the tokenization is a bigger problem than the model itself.

[halJordan]

This is a very unserious take. It's not ironic, because it's not a calculator.

[rrr_oh_man]

What's meaning of `computer`, remind me quick?