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Wolfram Alpha can solve equations well, but it is terrible at understanding natural language. For example I asked Wolfram Alpha "How heavy a rocket has to be t
by GuB-42 2y ago
Wolfram Alpha can solve equations well, but it is terrible at understanding natural language.
For example I asked Wolfram Alpha "How heavy a rocket has to be to launch 5 tons to LEO with a specific impulse of 400s", which is a straightforward application of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. Wolfram Alpha gave me some nonsense about particle physics (result: 95 MeV/c^2), GPT-4o did it right (result: 53.45 tons).
Wolfram alpha knows about the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, it knows about LEO (low earth orbit), but I found no way to get a delta-v out of it, again, more nonsense. It tells me about Delta airlines, mentions satellites that it knows are not in LEO. The "natural language" part is a joke. It is more like an advanced calculator, and for that, it is great.
- bongodongobob 2y agoYou're using it wrong, you can use natural language in your equation, but afaik it's not supposed to be able to do what you're asking of it.
- CamperBob2 2y agoYou know, "You're using it wrong" is usually meant to carry an ironic or sarcastic tone, right? It dates back to Steve Jobs blaming an iPhone 4 user for "holding it wrong" rather than acknowledging a flawed antenna design that was causing dropped calls. The closest Apple ever came to admitting that it was their problem was when they subsequently ran an employment ad to hire a new antenna engineering lead. Maybe it's time for Wolfram to hire a new language-model lead.
- kortilla 2y agoNo, “holding it wrong” is the sarcastic version. “You’re using it wrong” is a super common way to tell people they are literally using something wrong.
- CamperBob2 2y agoBut they're not using it wrong. They are using it as advertised by Wolfram themselves (read: himself). The GP's rocket equation question is exactly the sort of use case for which Alpha has been touted for years.
- bongodongobob 2y agoIt's not an LLM. You're simply asking too much of it. It doesn't work the way you want it to, sorry.
- CamperBob2 2y agoTell Wolfram. They're the ones who've been advertising it for years, well before LLMs were a thing, using English-language prompts like these examples: https://www.pcmag.com/news/23-cool-non-math-things-you-can-do-with-wolfram-alpha https://www.pcmag.com/news/23-cool-non-math-things-you-can-d... The problem has always been that you only get good answers if you happen to stumble on a specific question that it can handle. Combining Alpha with an LLM could actually be pretty awesome, but I'm sure it's easier said than done.
- Sharlin 2y agoBefore LLMs exploded nobody really expected WA to perform well at natural language comprehension. The expectations were at the level of "an ELIZA that knows math".
- edflsafoiewq 2y agoCorrect, so it isn't a "ChatGPT of Math", which was the point.