We could've slapped a chat interface on calculators and called them "AI" because they can do superhuman math instantly. Most technical people would've thought that was stupid.

LLMs are the same kind of category mistake.

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CamperBob2 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Let's talk about category mistakes. You've been here since 2007, according to your other reply. You understand that calculators have as much to do with mathematics as telescopes have to do with cosmology. Right?

If someone unskilled at math brings a calculator to an international math competition, they will not succeed at solving many problems. Most likely, they will solve none at all. But if they bring a frontier LLM (and succeed at concealing it from the organizers), they can walk away with a gold medal. Such a feat requires intelligence... and if the contestant didn't provide the intelligence himself/herself, where'd it come from?

That means that analogies involving calculators are completely useless when the topic is AI. Calculators are not, and can never be, intelligent. LLMs are nothing even remotely like calculators.

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jacobgold 2 days ago | parent [-]

> If someone unskilled at math brings a calculator to an international math competition, they will not succeed at solving many problems.

> But if they bring a frontier LLM (and succeed at concealing it from the organizers), they can walk away with a gold medal.

Of course you could win all kinds of math competitions with a concealed calculator. Maybe you'd need a fancy one, like a little SBC running Python. Anything complex and timed would be easy to win. You'd look like a genius to anyone who didn't know you had it.

> Such a feat requires intelligence... and if the contestant didn't provide the intelligence himself/herself, where'd it come from?

From computer software running on computer hardware, just like a calculator.

Calculating trillions of digits of pi also requires intelligence far beyond human capacity.

Computers displaying intelligence doesn't imply human-like intelligence. This is the source of confusion.

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scarmig 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The idea that a calculator, or a calculator with Python, or even a calculator with a proof assistant (and every book ever written on math) would help a random person at e.g. IMO or Putnam is fairly revealing.

	▲	CamperBob2 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah, this is definitely one of those "Smile, nod, back away slowly, reach for doorknob" threads.
	▲	jacobgold 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The idea that anyone would think anyone else would think that is fairly revealing.
	▲	2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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CamperBob2 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course you could win all kinds of math competitions with a concealed calculator. Maybe you'd need a fancy one, like a little SBC running Python.

My mistake.

	▲	jacobgold 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Taking issue with using a computer to power the calculator? If so, you should know that all modern calculators are computers under the hood. Everything I've written about calculators applies to computers doing any kind of traditional deterministic processing, without anything like LLMs.

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_doctor_love 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Funny enough, calculators went through this exact same thing when they came out. "If the calculator can do math for the students, will they still learn?"

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jacobgold 2 days ago | parent [-]

We didn't have confused people claiming calculators were human-like intelligences doing math.

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Jensson 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

We did have that, people thought computers would overtake humans very soon when computers got better than humans at such things. It happens every single time computers do a new thing that previously humans were better at. Then 10 years later people see, oh that is just calculations, of course computers are better at that.

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_doctor_love 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Sorry I don't follow what argument you're making?

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pixl97 2 days ago | parent [-]

They seem to be making a religious argument at this point. They don't like that the AI is a very poorly defined term and they are mad as hell about it to the point of irrational forum posting.

	▲	jacobgold 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem