5 ms·

LLMs cannot reason, they can only say things that sound reasonable, there's a difference. Duh.

by emorning3 2y ago

rosstaylor90 2y ago
What's your AIME 2025 score? https://gr.inc/RJT1990/AIME2025/ https://gr.inc/RJT1990/AIME2025/
- nyrikki 2y ago
  The is the point of the AIME, it is a 3 hour closed book examination in which each answer is an integer number from 0 to 999 and should only depend on pre-calc...for a human with no calculator, notes, or internet access. The concepts are heavily covered in the training corpus, and if people were allowed to take it more than once, with even a book let alone access to the internet it wouldn't be very hard. Examples: 1) Find the sum of all integer bases $b>9$ for which $17_b$ is a divisor of $97_b.$ In the corpus: https://www.quora.com/In-what-bases-b-does-b-7-divide-into-9b-7-without-any-remainder https://www.quora.com/In-what-bases-b-does-b-7-divide-into-9... And one more: 3) https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/2025_AIME_I_Problems/Problem_3 https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/2025_AIME_I_P... Is just the the number of ways to distribute k indistinguishable balls (players) into n distinguishable boxes (flavors, without exclusion, in such a way that no box is empty. Thus in the corpus for any courses that need to cover combinatorial problems including physics, discreet math, logistics etc... IMHO these concept classes from a typical AIME are so common, the scores you gave demonstrate that those models are doing no "general reasoning" at all and are actually failing at approximate retrieval.
  - rosstaylor90 2y ago
    I disagree, 10 years ago AIs nailing these types of competition would have been seen as very impressive. The fact goal posts can move on this now shows how much AI has progressed. (Also the term “approximate retrieval” is a bad one - reasoning is inherently a process of chaining together associations. What matters is whether the reasoning reaches the right conclusions. Still some way to go, but already very impressive in tasks traditionally considered harbours of human reasoning!)
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      I disagree, 10 years ago AIs nailing these types of competition would have been seen as very impressive. It would have been seen as witchcraft.
    - bossyTeacher 2y ago
      > What matters is whether the reasoning reaches the right conclusions no, it doesn't. a broken clock is right twice a day, reasoning is about the journey more than the destination
      - rosstaylor90 2y ago
        RL has more than two steps...
        bossyTeacher 2y ago
        Point is that reasoning is more about the conclusions. if your steps are wrong, your reasoning is wrong regardless of the conclusion. Poor reasoning is what could make an LLM conclude that 1 + 2 = 3 but what 2 + 1 = [some number other than 3]
nh23423fefe 2y ago
jokes on you, they can't even speak. so obviously your sentence is meaningless. arguing about definitions is very fruitful!
perching_aix 2y ago
emorning3 cannot reason, he can only say things that sound reasonable, there's a difference. Duh. good luck. as a reminder, there are people who, with varying degrees of certainty, think their loved ones have been replaced by actors, as well as people who think they're actually the god of the world around them, for it is just their imagination.
- leptons 2y ago
  > as a reminder, there are people who, with varying degrees of certainty, think their loved ones have been replaced by actors, as well as people who think they're actually the god of the world around them, for it is just their imagination. None of that is any proof at all that LLMs or computers in general can reason. "some humans are dumb, so LLMs are smart" is not a valid argument here.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    how do we test for reasoning? if A -> B and B -> C, then something that can reason could conclude A -> C. If I give A -> B and B -> C to an LLM, and ask it about the relationship between A and C, it'll tell me about the transitive property of implication, graph theory, transitivity. That there's no qualia behind that, that doesn't really reason or think or breath or love, we have to go back and ask what is reasoning. there are some definitions for reasoning that LLMs can pass, there are some they can't. If they're able to outperform dumb humans whom we assume do reason, why does that not mean that LLMs have some capacity to reason?
    - vhantz 2y ago
      > how do we test for reasoning? if A -> B and B -> C, then something that can reason could conclude A -> C. If I give A -> B and B -> C to an LLM, and ask it about the relationship between A and C, it'll tell me about the transitive property of implication, graph theory, transitivity. Not true. A LLM might give you that answer x% of the time, x being a number less than 100. However, any thinking person answering your question, will give you the same answer, no matter how many times you ask it. That's the fundamental difference between thinking and statistically mapping and reproducing the structure of human language.
CamperBob2 2y ago
My next-token predictor said you would say that next.

LLMs cannot reason, they can only say things that sound reasonable, there's a difference. Duh.

rosstaylor90 2y ago

What's your AIME 2025 score? https://gr.inc/RJT1990/AIME2025/ https://gr.inc/RJT1990/AIME2025/

nyrikki 2y ago
The is the point of the AIME, it is a 3 hour closed book examination in which each answer is an integer number from 0 to 999 and should only depend on pre-calc...for a human with no calculator, notes, or internet access. The concepts are heavily covered in the training corpus, and if people were allowed to take it more than once, with even a book let alone access to the internet it wouldn't be very hard. Examples: 1) Find the sum of all integer bases $b>9$ for which $17_b$ is a divisor of $97_b.$ In the corpus: https://www.quora.com/In-what-bases-b-does-b-7-divide-into-9b-7-without-any-remainder https://www.quora.com/In-what-bases-b-does-b-7-divide-into-9... And one more: 3) https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/2025_AIME_I_Problems/Problem_3 https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/2025_AIME_I_P... Is just the the number of ways to distribute k indistinguishable balls (players) into n distinguishable boxes (flavors, without exclusion, in such a way that no box is empty. Thus in the corpus for any courses that need to cover combinatorial problems including physics, discreet math, logistics etc... IMHO these concept classes from a typical AIME are so common, the scores you gave demonstrate that those models are doing no "general reasoning" at all and are actually failing at approximate retrieval.
- rosstaylor90 2y ago
  I disagree, 10 years ago AIs nailing these types of competition would have been seen as very impressive. The fact goal posts can move on this now shows how much AI has progressed. (Also the term “approximate retrieval” is a bad one - reasoning is inherently a process of chaining together associations. What matters is whether the reasoning reaches the right conclusions. Still some way to go, but already very impressive in tasks traditionally considered harbours of human reasoning!)
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    I disagree, 10 years ago AIs nailing these types of competition would have been seen as very impressive. It would have been seen as witchcraft.
  - bossyTeacher 2y ago
    > What matters is whether the reasoning reaches the right conclusions no, it doesn't. a broken clock is right twice a day, reasoning is about the journey more than the destination
    - rosstaylor90 2y ago
      RL has more than two steps...
      - bossyTeacher 2y ago
        Point is that reasoning is more about the conclusions. if your steps are wrong, your reasoning is wrong regardless of the conclusion. Poor reasoning is what could make an LLM conclude that 1 + 2 = 3 but what 2 + 1 = [some number other than 3]

nh23423fefe 2y ago

jokes on you, they can't even speak. so obviously your sentence is meaningless. arguing about definitions is very fruitful!

perching_aix 2y ago

emorning3 cannot reason, he can only say things that sound reasonable, there's a difference. Duh. good luck. as a reminder, there are people who, with varying degrees of certainty, think their loved ones have been replaced by actors, as well as people who think they're actually the god of the world around them, for it is just their imagination.

leptons 2y ago
> as a reminder, there are people who, with varying degrees of certainty, think their loved ones have been replaced by actors, as well as people who think they're actually the god of the world around them, for it is just their imagination. None of that is any proof at all that LLMs or computers in general can reason. "some humans are dumb, so LLMs are smart" is not a valid argument here.
- fragmede 2y ago
  how do we test for reasoning? if A -> B and B -> C, then something that can reason could conclude A -> C. If I give A -> B and B -> C to an LLM, and ask it about the relationship between A and C, it'll tell me about the transitive property of implication, graph theory, transitivity. That there's no qualia behind that, that doesn't really reason or think or breath or love, we have to go back and ask what is reasoning. there are some definitions for reasoning that LLMs can pass, there are some they can't. If they're able to outperform dumb humans whom we assume do reason, why does that not mean that LLMs have some capacity to reason?
  - vhantz 2y ago
    > how do we test for reasoning? if A -> B and B -> C, then something that can reason could conclude A -> C. If I give A -> B and B -> C to an LLM, and ask it about the relationship between A and C, it'll tell me about the transitive property of implication, graph theory, transitivity. Not true. A LLM might give you that answer x% of the time, x being a number less than 100. However, any thinking person answering your question, will give you the same answer, no matter how many times you ask it. That's the fundamental difference between thinking and statistically mapping and reproducing the structure of human language.

CamperBob2 2y ago

My next-token predictor said you would say that next.