[irishcoffee]

My 4-year-old kid was able to figure out 2+2=4 after I taught them 1+1=2. All 3 of them actually, all at 4-5 years old.

Turns out counting 2 sets of two objects (1… 2… 3… 4…) isn’t actually hard to do if you teach the kid how to count to 10 and that 1+1=2

I guess when we get to toddler stage of LLMs I’ll be more interested.

[soulofmischief]

That's wonderful, but you are ignoring that your kid comes built in with a massive range of biological priors, built by millions of years of evolution, which make counting natural and easy out of the box. Machine learning models have to learn all of these things from scratch.

And does your child's understanding of mathematics scale? I'm sure your 4-year-old would fail at harder arithmetic. Can they also tell me why 1+1=2? Like actually why we believe that? LLMs can do that. Modern LLMs are actually insanely good at not just basic algebra, but abstract, symbolic mathematics.

You're comparing apples and oranges, and seem to lack foundational knowledge in mathematics and computer science. It's no wonder this makes no sense to you. I was more patient about it before, but now this conversation is just getting tiresome. I'd rather spend my energy elsewhere. Take care, have a good day.

[irishcoffee]

I hope you restore your energy, I had no idea this was so exhausting! Truly, I'll stop afflicting my projected lack of knowledge, sorry I tired you out!

[hrimfaxi]

Ah man, I was curious to read your response about priors.

> If an LLM had only ever seen 1+1=2 and that was the only math they were ever exposed to, along with the numbers 0-10, could an LLM figure out that 2+2=4?

Unless you locked your kid in a room since birth with just this information, it is not the same kind of set up is it?

[baq]

You compared a LLM blob of numbers to a child.

[irishcoffee]

Everyone else compared them to college interns, I was being generous.

[soulofmischief]

No, you were being arrogant and presumptuous, providing flawed analogies and using them as evidence for unfounded and ill-formed claims about the capabilities of frontier models.

Lack of knowledge is one thing, arrogance is another.