Well I didn't really make a bold claim, I said "might", but presumably there is a reason why we teach kids basic mental maths before we teach them how to use a

Well I didn't really make a bold claim, I said "might", but presumably there is a reason why we teach kids basic mental maths before we teach them how to use a calculator. Humans are different to an AI, but putting that aside, my intuition would be that if we never taught kids any mental maths, their concept/understanding of numbers would be fundamentally different to how it is if they learn that 9 x 9 = 81 (also look at how your fingers move - there is a relationship there!). But who knows, AI is strange and there's lots of stuff that needs to be experimented with. I would think training an intuitive sense of numbers would have other fall-outs though. This is half the beauty of LLM's right? You show an LLM some history books and it also learns about biology, politics, grammar, etymology and love. You teach a LLM maths and it also learns ... ?