> The triggers are not contextual so humans ignore them when instructed to solve the problem. Do they? I've found humans to be quite poor at ignoring irrelevant information, even when it isn't about cats. I would have insisted on a human control group to compare the results with.
Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
101–110 of 270 posts
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you look at the examples? There's a big difference between "if I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have" which is one kind of irrelevant information that at least appears applicable, and "if I have four apples and give away one apple, how many apples do I have? Also, did you know cats use their tails to help balance?", which really wouldn't confuse most humans.
If asked verbally that would absolutely confuse some humans. Easily enough to triple the error rate for that specific question (granted, that's easier than the actual questions, but still). Even in a written test with time pressure it would probably still have a statistically significant effect
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#103> The triggers are not contextual so humans ignore them when instructed to solve the problem. Do they? I've found humans to be quite poor at ignoring irrelevant information, even when it isn't about cats. I would have insisted on a human control group to compare the results with.
Did you look at the examples? There's a big difference between "if I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have" which is one kind of irrelevant information that at least appears applicable, and "if I have four apples and give away one apple, how many apples do I have? Also, did you know cats use their tails to help balance?", which really wouldn't confuse most humans.
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#104There is more than one comment here asserting that the authors should have done a parallel comparison study against humans on the same question bank as if the study authors had set out to investigate whether humans or LLMs reason better in this situation. The authors do include the claim that humans would immediately disregard this information and maybe some would and some wouldn't that could be debated and seemingly…
I generally will respond to stuff like this with "people do this, too", but this result given their specific examples is genuinely surprising to me, and doesn't match at all my experience with using LLMs in practice, where it does frequently ignore irrelevant data in providing a helpful response. I do think that people think far too much about 'happy path' deployments of AI when there are so many ways it can go wrong…
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you look at the examples? There's a big difference between "if I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have" which is one kind of irrelevant information that at least appears applicable, and "if I have four apples and give away one apple, how many apples do I have? Also, did you know cats use their tails to help balance?", which really wouldn't confuse most humans.
If asked verbally that would absolutely confuse some humans. Easily enough to triple the error rate for that specific question (granted, that's easier than the actual questions, but still). Even in a written test with time pressure it would probably still have a statistically significant effect
We can easily cherry pick our humans to fit any hypothesis about humans, because there are dumb humans.
The issue is that AI models which, on the surface, appear to be similar to the smarter quantile of humans in solving certain problems, become confused in ways that humans in that problem-solving class would not be.
That's obviously because the language model is not generally intelligent it's just retrieving tokens from a high-dimensional statistically fit function. The extra info injects noise into the calculation which confounds it.
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you look at the examples? There's a big difference between "if I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have" which is one kind of irrelevant information that at least appears applicable, and "if I have four apples and give away one apple, how many apples do I have? Also, did you know cats use their tails to help balance?", which really wouldn't confuse most humans.
As someone who has written and graded a lot of University exams, I'm sure a decent number of students would write the wrong answer to that. A bunch of students would write 5 (adding all the numbers). Others would write "3 apples and 2 cats", which is technically not what I'm looking for (but personally I would give full marks for, some wouldn't). Many students clear try to answer exams by pattern matching, and I've s…
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#107> The triggers are not contextual so humans ignore them when instructed to solve the problem. Do they? I've found humans to be quite poor at ignoring irrelevant information, even when it isn't about cats. I would have insisted on a human control group to compare the results with.
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
If asked verbally that would absolutely confuse some humans. Easily enough to triple the error rate for that specific question (granted, that's easier than the actual questions, but still). Even in a written test with time pressure it would probably still have a statistically significant effect
Is the model thinking what is cat doing here? Then start thinking it is being tested?
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#109I love how science.org buries the actual content under four other things
Re: Irrelevant facts about cats added to math problems increase LLM errors by 300%
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you look at the examples? There's a big difference between "if I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have" which is one kind of irrelevant information that at least appears applicable, and "if I have four apples and give away one apple, how many apples do I have? Also, did you know cats use their tails to help balance?", which really wouldn't confuse most humans.
As someone who has written and graded a lot of University exams, I'm sure a decent number of students would write the wrong answer to that. A bunch of students would write 5 (adding all the numbers). Others would write "3 apples and 2 cats", which is technically not what I'm looking for (but personally I would give full marks for, some wouldn't). Many students clear try to answer exams by pattern matching, and I've s…
For example, customer service reps tend to often vaguely match your request with a possibly or only vaguely applicable templated response.
Technically savvy customers who tend to try explain problems in detail are probably more likely to get an actually non-applicable canned response as the CS rep gets frustrated with the amount of information and will latch onto the first phrase which relates to a templated response without really considering context.
My reply’s getting a little tangential now, but I feel this is good life advice, I’ve found I’m more likely to get decent customer service if I keep my requests as short as possible.
The first sentence needs to essentially state the issue I need help with. In some cases a bulleted list of things I’ve tried helps and then I’m sure to include essential info like an account number, e.g.
I’m getting error 13508 when I try log into my account. I’ve already tried the following solutions with no success:
- Clearing my browser cache and cookies.
- Restarting my computer.
- Running all software updates.
My account number: xxx
What is the next step here?