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A calculator can be trusted to give you the right answer if you punch in the numbers correctly. An LLM cannot. That's because a calculator is designed to give
by pdonis 2y ago
A calculator can be trusted to give you the right answer if you punch in the numbers correctly. An LLM cannot.
That's because a calculator is designed to give the right answer. An LLM is not. It's only designed to produce text that seems plausible based on the prompt. "Plausible" is not the same as "trustworthy".
- engineer_22 2y agoTo play the devils advocate, on some calculators 9+3x2=24
- miltonlost 2y agoThat's not playing devil's advocate. That's you not understanding how the calculator was programmed. A graphing calculator in which you can put (9+3x2) before pressing enter is different than a adding calculator in which you can only do sequential binary operations (9+3, enter, x2, enter). The calculator is programmed exactly to do as it was. Both calculators are correct in their programming. It's you who mistyped what you intended.
- engineer_22 2y agomy point exactly
- AceyMan 2y agoAhh, so we just need an RPN variant of LLMs to avoid any ambiguity .
- grues-dinner 2y agoVerbs at the end. You must simply all your questions like a German ask.
- tines 2y agoI don’t think things would be different if the LLM gave answers that were 100% reliable and correct, it would still be sad that the kid is having someone else do their homework for them with no effort on their part. What you say is true but irrelevant. The real difference is that calculation isn’t the important part of math above a certain level.
- pdonis 2y agoI don't think what I said is irrelevant. A calculator is a reliable tool. When used properly it can be helpful. The same would apply to more sophisticated tools that are available now with computers to help with math, such as tools that can quickly graph equations, or show the results of complex numerical simulations. There is certainly an argument for not allowing the use of such tools in certain learning environments, but if the tools are reliable, there will come a point where their usefulness outweighs their disadvantages. An LLM is not a reliable tool, and that is a huge difference. It's not just that the students are asking "someone else" to do their homework for them. It's that they're being lied to by the proponents of LLMs, who are telling them the answers the LLM gives them are reliable, when they're not. Nobody made claims about what calculators can do that weren't justified by their actual design.