Yes, the former, trying to satirize cases where people are testing LLMs capabilities by its ability to count characters in a word, do mathematical operations to

Yes, the former, trying to satirize cases where people are testing LLMs capabilities by its ability to count characters in a word, do mathematical operations token by token or otherwise. Because LLM is seeing hieroglyphs compared to character by character words that we are seeing. The true test is its ability to solve those problems using tools like somebody is using a calculator. And while it is good to learn and be good at math, it's not because of counting how much change you should receive when buying something. It's to figure out how reasoning works or how to reason in the first place.