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by dapperdrake 148 days ago
Am serious about asking for the opinion of someone affected by a problem or phenomenon.
1 comments

Ya, sorry, I'm in a mood.

But logically, calculators only do math, and they have primitive inputs that aren't going to match exactly what is on the sheet for anything other than THE most simplest of equations. You can't talk to a calculator in natural language, you have to learn how to use one (kind of like a ahem programming language). I never found calculators helped me "cheat" at math, it was still hard.

FWIW, when I was studying, I trained on some decades old physics exams. Some of them were largely about calculating things by hand.

So, yeah, calculators did lead academia to change how exams had to be designed, because it solved some questions automatically.

I still think that LLMs are much worse, but I feel that the question is actually valid.

Most of the contemporary mathematical proofs from LLMs read like first-semester failings. Doesn’t really help to cheat there, either.
Interesting! Though I will hold out for the "you're prompting it wrong" comments.