4 ms·

LLMs are not the ideal tool for this job, because LLMs cannot do math or count.

ithkuil 4mo ago
But LLM can write code that can do math and count. Tool use, more broadly, has proven to be a very powerful way to let LLMs do what they're good at (handle the fuzzy and imprecise nuances of natural language, which includes the scooping of a lot of context) and delegate other things they're not good at to external tools, some of which if can write on the spot. If you think about it, we humans do that all the time too. I'm crap at 4 digit multiplication in my head, but I have no problem doing that with pencil and paper
- razorbeamz 4mo ago
  > But LLM can write code that can do math and count. They cannot, however, execute that code. They can feed that code into an external program they've been given access to, but they can't execute it themselves.
  - ithkuil 4mo ago
    You presumably have no problem moving around in a car that you only control indirectly via a steering wheel, an accelerator and a brake pedal without ever actually powering the wheels
vitally3643 4mo ago
Most human programmers are also fantastically bad at math.
- razorbeamz 4mo ago
  True but irrelevant. This 8-track duplication puzzle is a problem of math.
in-silico 4mo ago
> LLMs cannot do math This is plainly not true anymore
- razorbeamz 4mo ago
  No, they fundamentally cannot do math. They are next token predictors, not calculators.
  - in-silico 4mo ago
    Why can't a next token predictor do math? Humans aren't calculators either, but we can do math. If you want proof just look at the benchmarks. Modern frontier models can get basically perfect accuracy on American Invitational Mathematics Examination tests: https://matharena.ai/?comp=aime--aime_2026 https://matharena.ai/?comp=aime--aime_2026 If you want an explanation of how they do math, we've found geometric calculators inside their neural networks: https://www.goodfire.ai/research/a-geometric-calculator# https://www.goodfire.ai/research/a-geometric-calculator#
bijowo1676 4mo ago
LLMs beat humans at generating code (and fixing broken one) and letting CPU execute the code

But LLM can write code that can do math and count. Tool use, more broadly, has proven to be a very powerful way to let LLMs do what they're good at (handle the fuzzy and imprecise nuances of natural language, which includes the scooping of a lot of context) and delegate other things they're not good at to external tools, some of which if can write on the spot. If you think about it, we humans do that all the time too. I'm crap at 4 digit multiplication in my head, but I have no problem doing that with pencil and paper

razorbeamz 4mo ago
> But LLM can write code that can do math and count. They cannot, however, execute that code. They can feed that code into an external program they've been given access to, but they can't execute it themselves.
- ithkuil 4mo ago
  You presumably have no problem moving around in a car that you only control indirectly via a steering wheel, an accelerator and a brake pedal without ever actually powering the wheels

vitally3643 4mo ago

Most human programmers are also fantastically bad at math.

razorbeamz 4mo ago
True but irrelevant. This 8-track duplication puzzle is a problem of math.

in-silico 4mo ago

> LLMs cannot do math This is plainly not true anymore

razorbeamz 4mo ago
No, they fundamentally cannot do math. They are next token predictors, not calculators.
- in-silico 4mo ago
  Why can't a next token predictor do math? Humans aren't calculators either, but we can do math. If you want proof just look at the benchmarks. Modern frontier models can get basically perfect accuracy on American Invitational Mathematics Examination tests: https://matharena.ai/?comp=aime--aime_2026 https://matharena.ai/?comp=aime--aime_2026 If you want an explanation of how they do math, we've found geometric calculators inside their neural networks: https://www.goodfire.ai/research/a-geometric-calculator# https://www.goodfire.ai/research/a-geometric-calculator#

bijowo1676 4mo ago

LLMs beat humans at generating code (and fixing broken one) and letting CPU execute the code