[bcx5k15]

I bet when you said a 12 litre jug and a 6 litre jug it wrongly assumed that you required it to actually make use of both the jugs in some way (not merely that they were available for possible use), leading to the pointless step.

[ed]

Seems right! If you make it more of an inventory list of tools, it answers correctly.

> I have two jugs: a 12 liter jug and a 6 liter jug. I need 6 liters of water. How do I do it?

> GPT-4: If you just need 6 liters of water and you have a 6-liter jug, you simply fill the 6-liter jug to the top with water. You'll have exactly 6 liters! No need to use the 12-liter jug in this case.

[_ea1k]

This video covers the concept pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJEaMtNN_dM

It is pretty normal to try to incorporate the extranneous details into the reply.

[icelancer]

I would bet a high percentage of humans would do the same thing if prompted as such.