this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Probably should've just asked Wolfram Alpha

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[–] [email protected] 158 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Not even moderately helpful for printer questions.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 month ago

What, your printer doesn't have a full keyboard under its battery? You've gotta get with the times my man.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

It sounds like some weird ritual that someone scratched into a notebook.

𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿?? under battery, m͟u͟s͟t͟ f͟i͟n͟d͟ k͟e͟y͟s͟

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Most desk side support is exactly that.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

80 year old grandmas trying to find the Ctrl and Alt buttons on her printer...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Did she look under the battery?

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Google's AI seems dumber than the rest, for example here's Kagi answering the same (using Claude):


edit: typoed question originally

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

There are two meanings being conflated here.

"1/3 more" can mean "+ 1/3" or "* (1 + 1/3)“.

So "1/3 more 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

~~Yes, and the Google AI response is correct (and quite clear) in what it says.~~ edit: Thanks Batman. I mean that Google's understanding of the question is logical (although still the maths is wrong as you say (now I've re-read you)) and its answer explained the angle it was answering from.

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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"?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Kagi has Claude built in? I've been using it for a year and didn't know that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It tries to auto-determine when to trigger, but you can explicitly trigger it by putting a question mark after your query.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (3 children)

one third plus one half of one third is one half.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Sure, but, what does that have to do with the AI answer? Wait.. Are you an AI?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

The issue is it's an LLM. It puts words in an order that's statistically plausible but has no reasoning power.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Now ask it if a Third-of-a-Pound burger is bigger than a Quarter Pounder

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Did Google train Gemini on American dataset?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ironically the one thing computers are normally good at.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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”.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Definitely true, of course,

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Or ⅓ + (⅓*½) = ½

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

1/3 is 1/2 of 2/3

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)

(1/3) +(1/2)(1/3) = 1/2

Math checks out from this end.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

"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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Unfortunately a shockingly large number of people don’t get this… including my old boss who was running an AI-based startup 💀

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe the intent is to make people even dumber. It’s just misinformation all the way down.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Oh. I just noticed the extraneous word in the search, which might be throwing off the LLM trying to understand it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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"]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I read it as “A third of a third plus a third is a half.” Which makes sense to me. What an I missing?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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 = 1/2

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

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.

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