All of the latest models I've tried actually pass this test. What I found interesting was all of the success cases were similar to: e.g. "Drive. Most car washes require the car to be present to wash,..." Only most?! They have an inability to have a strong "opinion" probably because their post training, and maybe the internet in general, prefer hedged answers....
I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
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Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#112Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#113All of the latest models I've tried actually pass this test. What I found interesting was all of the success cases were similar to: e.g. "Drive. Most car washes require the car to be present to wash,..." Only most?! They have an inability to have a strong "opinion" probably because their post training, and maybe the internet in general, prefer hedged answers....
> They have an inability to have a strong "opinion" probably What opinion? It's evaluation function simply returned the word "Most" as being the most likely first word in similar sentences it was trained on. It's a perfect example showing how dangerous this tech could be in a scenario where the prompter is less competent in the domain they are looking an answer for. Let's not do the work of filling in the gaps for th…
Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#114Grok 4.1: Drive. 50 meters is nothing — literally a 30-second walk or a 10-second drive — but the key point is: your car isn’t going to wash itself. If you walk to the car wash, you arrive alone. The car stays parked at home, still dirty. If you drive, the car actually gets to the car wash and gets cleaned. So unless you’re planning to push the car the whole way (which is technically possible but ridiculous), the onl…
That's not reality though. In reality you need 50-100ml of fuel just to warm up the engine.
Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#115Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#116Like, why do you want to go to the car wash?
We can’t assume it’s to wash a car.
Or maybe ask about local weather conditions and so on.
This to me is what a human adult with experience would do. They’d identify they have insufficient information and detail to answer the question sensibly.
Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#117I've used LLMs enough that I have a good sense of their _edges_ of intelligence. I had assumed that reasoning models should easily be able to answer this correctly. And indeed, Sonnet and Opus 4.5 (medium reasoning) say the following: Sonnet: Drive - you need to bring your car to the car wash to get it washed! Opus: You'll need to drive — you have to bring the car to the car wash to get it washed! Gemini 3 Pro (mediu…
Opus 4.6: Walk! At 50 meters, you'll get there in under a minute on foot. Driving such a short distance wastes fuel, and you'd spend more time starting the car and parking than actually traveling. Plus, you'll need to be at the car wash anyway to pick up your car once it's done.
Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#118Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#119Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
#120> That is a classic "efficiency vs. logic" dilemma. Honestly, unless you’ve invented a way to teleport or you're planning on washing the car with a very long garden hose from your driveway, you’re going to have to drive.
> While 50 meters is a great distance for a morning stroll, it’s a bit difficult to get the car through the automated brushes (or under the pressure washer) if you aren't behind the wheel.
Gemini thinking:
> Unless you’ve mastered the art of carrying a 3,000-pound vehicle on your back, you’re going to want to drive. While 50 meters is a very short distance (about a 30-second walk), the logistics of a car wash generally require the presence of, well... the car. > When you should walk: • If you are just going there to buy an air freshener. • If you are checking to see how long the line is before pulling the car out of the driveway. • If you’re looking for an excuse to get 70 extra steps on your fitness tracker.
Note: I abbreviated the raw output slightly for brevity, but generally demonstrates good reasoning of the trick question unlike the other models.