[rng_civ]

The whole point of this post is that we are trying to:

  * Classify the computational power of Transformers (when it stumbles on certain easier problems but can solve harder ones)

  * Find a "minimal" change to the Transformer that would allow it to compute these problems.

Solving these 2 problems by giving LLMs arbitrary access to external plugins is a cop out. You would not:

  * Call youself a chef just because you own a restaraunt (you need to cook too!)

  * Or (more program-y), say that C code meets Rust's memory safety standards simply because you can write the main function in C and write the rest of the program in Rust

Allowing arbitrary external plugins seems absurdly overkill and not 'minimal' (although that doesn't mean it isn't interesting from a practical perspective!), which is what I assumed that the rain1 was originally pointing out.

[magicalhippo]

My point is why must transformers be able to do everything?

edit: I don't mean to dismiss the work trying to figure out what they can do. That seems reasonable and valuable.

It's just, we're not trying to figure out how to tweak QR decomposition to solve arbitrary equations. It's a tool, a powerful tool, but it has some clear limitations.