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How do we define "understanding" though? Because you can add to your prompt: "Do it step by step, showing how you come up with the solution" and it will simplif
by mgfist 4y ago
How do we define "understanding" though? Because you can add to your prompt: "Do it step by step, showing how you come up with the solution" and it will simplify the original complex problem into multiple smaller pieces. It's clearly doing something.
For example, I just asked bing: What does the following expression equal? Show your work, step by step: 4(13+2)7-1(4+3+9)+7^(2(2+1))
And bing responded with:
"To solve a math expression, you need to follow the order of operations: parentheses, exponents, multiplication/division, and addition/subtraction (PEMDAS).1 Here are the steps to solve your expression:
4(13+2)7-1(4+3+9)+7^(2(2+1))
Step 1: Simplify inside the parentheses first.
4(15)*7-1(16)+7^(6)
Step 2: Apply the exponents next.
420-16+117649
Step 3: Add or subtract from left to right.
118053
The final answer is 118053. I hope this helps.
"
I wrote the silly expression randomly. I'm not saying it's "thinking" or "understanding", but I wouldn't expect a text-generator to be able to deduce the problem down like that.
- thomastjeffery 4y agoIt's following an example story that it has read. > To solve a math expression, you need to follow the order of operations: parentheses, exponents, multiplication/division, and addition/subtraction (PEMDAS).1 Here are the steps to solve your expression: It isn't actually thinking about any of that statement. That's just boilerplate that goes at the beginning of this story. It's what bing is familiar seeing as a continuation to your prompt, "show your work, step by step". It gets more complicated when it shows addition being correctly simplified, but that behavior is still present in the examples in its training corpus. --- The thinking and understanding happened when the first person wrote the original story. It also happened when people provided examples of arithmetic expressions being simplified, though I suspect bing has some extra behavior inserted here. All the thought and meaning people put into text gets organized into patterns. LLMs find a prompt in the patterns they modeled, and "continues" the patterns. We find meaning correctly organized in the result. That's the whole story.
- chlorion 4y agoWolfram alpha can solve mathematical expressions like this as well, for what it's worth, and it's been around for a decent amount of time.