Probably should’ve just asked Wolfram Alpha
LLMs are really fucking bad at math. They’re trying to find the statistical close answer, not doing computation. It’s rather mind-numbingly dumb.
Unfortunately a shockingly large number of people don’t get this… including my old boss who was running an AI-based startup 💀
I read it as “A third of a third plus a third is a half.” Which makes sense to me. What an I missing?
What an I missing?
basic arithmetic? .33 + .33 doesn’t = .5
Guess that makes two of us. More like .11 + .33 doesn’t = .5
I was thinking the same thing.
It’s wrong.
1/3 + (1/3 * 1/3) = 3/9 + 1/9 = 4/9. It’s close though.However, one third plus one half of a third is correct.
1/3 + (1/2 * 1/3) = 1/3 + (1.5/3 * 1/3) = 1/3 + 0.5/3 = 1.5/3 = 1/2I’m guessing whatever it scraped to generate this was intended for divvying up food rather than doing actual math. 1/3 plus a third of a third is close enough to a half if you’re talking about portioning out pizza or leftovers or what have you.
one third plus one half of one third is one half.
I think thats an issue with AI, it has been so much trained on complex questions that now when you ask a simple one, it mistakes it for a complex one and answers it that way
It’s auto-complete. It knows that “4” is the most common substring to follow “2 + 2” in its training. It’s not actually doing addition.
The issue is it’s an LLM. It puts words in an order that’s statistically plausible but has no reasoning power.
Sure, but, what does that have to do with the AI answer? Wait… Are you an AI?
Now ask it if a Third-of-a-Pound burger is bigger than a Quarter Pounder
Did Google train Gemini on American dataset?
I don’t even look at the AI result. I scroll right past. That’s the thing, if it’s bullshit 50% of the time, and you can’t always tell like you can here, then it’s bullshit 100% of the time, and it’s useless, just taking up screen real estate.
This is very clearly an example of bad AI, but maybe it was trying (and failing) to convey this?
Basically, 1/3 + 1/9 + 1/27 + 1/81 + … + 1/3^n = 1/2.
Probably not. But maybe.
Or ⅓ + (⅓*½) = ½
1/3 is 1/2 of 2/3
I’m thinking it’s trying to say:
(2/6) + (1/6) = (3/6) = (4/6) - (1/6)
But either in “colloquial English for those who want to give other people aneurysms” or “colloquial English for those trying to sound smarter but aren’t”
Basically that the degree of difference between a half and a third is the same degree of difference between a half and two thirds- and that degree of difference is “one part”.
It’s not trying to say either of them.
It’s just guessing what word to say next, given the previous words in the context.
Definitely true, of course,
LLMs can’t math
The math is correct. One third (2/6) + half of one third (1/6) = one half (3/6, aka 1/2).
The Internet is very confidently stupid.
It didn’t mention halving a third.
Ironically the one thing computers are normally good at.
yea
“42”
“The answer to life the universe and everything is 42!?”
“Yes, I checked it quite thoroughly.”
…
“But what was the actual question?”
Alternatively, garbage in, garbage out.
considering where the garbage came from, maybe we should stop shitposting :)
That’s like having google make a pizza with everything in my fridge then they complain that I also keep the dog’s food in there.
Maybe the intent is to make people even dumber. It’s just misinformation all the way down.
Wouldn’t even be surprised at this point. It seems the system is intentionally designed to discourage critical thinking and apparently knowing how to do math properly is too close for comfort now.
Someone I know had an old friend on their Facebook timeline say that schools should be reformed and don’t need classes like algebra. Then they proceeded to list fields kids could receive training for instead… and all of them required math of some sort.
Oh. I just noticed the extraneous word in the search, which might be throwing off the LLM trying to understand it.
I asked ChatGPT these questions and got sensible answers.
How much more is one half than one third?
[subtraction answer: 1/6 more]
That’s one possibility, but what about the other way to interpret that question?
[ratio answer, but expressed as “1.5 times as much” rather than “1/2 more”]
Not even moderately helpful for printer questions.
80 year old grandmas trying to find the Ctrl and Alt buttons on her printer…
Did she look under the battery?
It sounds like some weird ritual that someone scratched into a notebook.
𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿?? ｕｎｄｅｒ ｂａｔｔｅｒｙ, m͟u͟s͟t͟ f͟i͟n͟d͟ k͟e͟y͟s͟
Wait did you edit this image? That’s some effort you’ve put in.
I actually sent a bunch of prompts through image generators till it gave something close to what I wanted
Using generative AI to try and visualize generative AI
Ah, that’s why it’s a bunch of symbols that make no sense, thanks for the clarification.
Most desk side support is exactly that.
What, your printer doesn’t have a full keyboard under its battery? You’ve gotta get with the times my man.
Google’s AI seems dumber than the rest, for example here’s Kagi answering the same (using Claude):
Perhaps Google’s tried to make it run too cheaply - Kagi’s one doesn’t run unless you ask for it, and as a paid product it’ll have different priorities.
There are two meanings being conflated here.
“1/3 more” can mean “+ 1/3” or "* (1 + 1/3)“.
So “1/3 more (of 1/3) than 1/3” could be 2/3 or 4/9, but not 1/2.
Instead 1/2 is 1/2 more than 1/3, not 1/3 more. That’s the meme I’ve seen go around recently.
Yes, and the Google AI response is correct (and quite clear) in what it says.
However, I think the reasonable assumption for the intention behind the question is relative to a whole. I had third of a pizza, and now I have an extra sixth of a pizza. It’s subtle, but that’s the kind of thing AI falls down on.
I agree with your assessment regarding the intention of the phrase. We’re back at the silly arithmetic meme that hinges on not grouping terms explicitly and watching people yell at each other in the mistaken belief that there’s one authoritative interpretation of an ambiguous string of symbols.
Still, the actual mistake remains. Why an extra 1/6 of the pizza? 1/3 of 1/3 is 1/9, not 1/6. That’s 1/2 of 1/3.
I thought we were finally agreeing fully! My understanding of the question is “what is the difference between a third (of a pizza, say) and a half?”
1/2 - 1/3 = 1/6
1/2 = 1/3 + 1/6
a half is one sixth more than a third.btw, I fixed my Kagi screenshot since I’d missed a word from the question (reading comprehension’s clearly not my strong point today)
Aha, yes. Somehow I forgot the difference interpretation for a moment. Oops!
You are saying “yes” to a comment explaining why the Google AI response cannot possibly be correct, so what do you mean “and [it’s] correct”?
Ah, you’re right - I misunderstood jbrain’s point to just be about the “relative to the original” understanding. Guess I’m no smarter than Google’s AI.
Kagi has Claude built in? I’ve been using it for a year and didn’t know that.
This is why Kagi is a great company.
Nobody is getting LLM functionality shoved in their faces unless they wanted to.
It tries to auto-determine when to trigger, but you can explicitly trigger it by putting a question mark after your query.
(1/3) +(1/2)(1/3) = 1/2
Math checks out from this end.
“a half is one-third more than a third” should mean either
1/3 + 1/3 = 1/2
Or
1/3 + (1/3 × 1/3) = 1/2
Neither of which is true.
I feel like ‘a half is one-third more than a third’ is ambiguous and same as in ‘X is N% more than Y’ one may use X or Y as 100%
I’m sure that one interpretation is more common, but I don’t think that it is exclusively correct
Basically, “X is one-third more than Y” means either X = (4/3) × Y or X = Y + 1/3. I’m fine with either interpretation.
The problem is that with the values of X and Y in this example, neither interpretation produces a valid equation.
1/3 more than 1/3 is 4/9. What you wrote is 1/2 more than 1/3, not 1/3 more of it.
