2 ms·

I love it how people are transitioning from “LLMs can’t reason” to “LLMs can’t reliably reason”.

charleshn 1y ago
Frontier models went from not being able to count the number of 'r's in "strawberry" to getting gold at IMO in under 2 years [0], and people keep repeating the same clichés such as "LLMs can't reason" or "they're just next token predictors". At this point, I think it can only be explained by ignorance, bad faith, or fear of becoming irrelevant. [0] https://x.com/alexwei_/status/1946477742855532918 https://x.com/alexwei_/status/1946477742855532918
- bwfan123 1y ago
  > At this point, I think it can only be explained by ignorance, bad faith, or fear of becoming irrelevant. Based on the past history with frontier-math & AIME 2025 [1],[2] I would not trust announcements which cant be independently verified. I am excited to try it out though. Also, the performance of LLMs was not even bronze [3]. Finally, this article shows that LLMs were just mostly bluffing [4]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1i53ih7/frontiermath_was_funded_by_openai_and_they_have/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1i53ih7/fro... [2] https://x.com/DimitrisPapail/status/1888325914603516214 https://x.com/DimitrisPapail/status/1888325914603516214 [3] https://matharena.ai/imo/ https://matharena.ai/imo/ [4] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.21934 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.21934
- yeasku 1y ago
  Open AI is 10 years old and and llm just told me a dolar is 1.03 euros.
  - kadushka 1y ago
    I don’t know which llm you used - I just asked gpt-4.1 - it did a web search and provided the correct exchange rate. It took about 5 seconds.
    - yeasku 1y ago
      That is what we did after chat gpt failed, a web search. It took us about 5 seconds.
overgard 1y ago
Well, I was hedging a bit because I try to not overstate the case, but I'm just as happy to say: LLM's can't reason. Because it's not what they're built to do. They predict what text is likely to appear next. But even if they can appear to reason, if it's not reliable, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't trust a tax advisor that makes things up 1/10 times, or even 1/100 times. If you're going to replace humans, "reliable" and "reproducible" are the most important things.
- kadushka 1y ago
  Frontier models like o3 reason better than most humans. Definitely better than me. It would wipe the floor with me in a debate - on any topic, every single time.

Frontier models went from not being able to count the number of 'r's in "strawberry" to getting gold at IMO in under 2 years [0], and people keep repeating the same clichés such as "LLMs can't reason" or "they're just next token predictors". At this point, I think it can only be explained by ignorance, bad faith, or fear of becoming irrelevant. [0] https://x.com/alexwei_/status/1946477742855532918 https://x.com/alexwei_/status/1946477742855532918

bwfan123 1y ago
> At this point, I think it can only be explained by ignorance, bad faith, or fear of becoming irrelevant. Based on the past history with frontier-math & AIME 2025 [1],[2] I would not trust announcements which cant be independently verified. I am excited to try it out though. Also, the performance of LLMs was not even bronze [3]. Finally, this article shows that LLMs were just mostly bluffing [4]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1i53ih7/frontiermath_was_funded_by_openai_and_they_have/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1i53ih7/fro... [2] https://x.com/DimitrisPapail/status/1888325914603516214 https://x.com/DimitrisPapail/status/1888325914603516214 [3] https://matharena.ai/imo/ https://matharena.ai/imo/ [4] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.21934 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.21934
yeasku 1y ago
Open AI is 10 years old and and llm just told me a dolar is 1.03 euros.
- kadushka 1y ago
  I don’t know which llm you used - I just asked gpt-4.1 - it did a web search and provided the correct exchange rate. It took about 5 seconds.
  - yeasku 1y ago
    That is what we did after chat gpt failed, a web search. It took us about 5 seconds.

overgard 1y ago

Well, I was hedging a bit because I try to not overstate the case, but I'm just as happy to say: LLM's can't reason. Because it's not what they're built to do. They predict what text is likely to appear next. But even if they can appear to reason, if it's not reliable, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't trust a tax advisor that makes things up 1/10 times, or even 1/100 times. If you're going to replace humans, "reliable" and "reproducible" are the most important things.

kadushka 1y ago
Frontier models like o3 reason better than most humans. Definitely better than me. It would wipe the floor with me in a debate - on any topic, every single time.