[tourmalinetaco]

Maybe, down the line. The calculator went through a long period of perfecting until it became as powerful as they are today. It’s only natural LLMs will also take time. And much like calculators moving from stepped drums, to vacuum tubes, to finally transistors, the way we build LLMs are sure to change. Although I’m not quite sure idempotence is something LLMs are capable of.

[anthk]

A Scientific HP calculator from late 80's was powerful enough to cover most of Engineering classes.

[tourmalinetaco]

Sure, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t improved. Try calculating 99! on a TI-59. I doubt it can do it, and I know the modern TI-30XIIS can’t do it, but my Numworks can (although doing it twice forces it to clear that section of RAM). The calculator space may be slow to improve, as most non-testing calculations have went to computers, but that doesn’t mean they’re not useful, especially with scripting languages allowing me to convert between whatever units I want or calculate anything easily.