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by wat10000 231 days ago
People are probabilistic, and I've been informed that people are able to perform multiplication.
2 comments

Yes, and unlike the LLM they can iterate on a problem.

When I multiply, I take it in chunks.

Put the LLM into a loop, instruct it to keep track of where it is and have it solve a digit at a time.

I bet it does just fine. See my other comment as to why I think that is.

Are you sure? I bet you if you pull 10 people off the street and ask them to multiply 5 digit by 5 digit numbers by hand, you won't have a 100% success rate.
The pertinent fact is that there exist people who can reliably perform 5x5 multiplication, not that every single person on the planet can do it.
I bet with a little training, practically anyone could multiply 5 digit numbers reliably.