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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?

#591

Post by Panda4 »

perakojotgenije wrote: post #583
jstummbillig wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so you need to tell them the specifics That is the entire point, right? Us having to specify things that we would never specify when talking to a human. You would not start with "The car is functional. The tank is filled with gas. I have my keys." As soon as we are required to do that for the model to any extend that is a problem and not a detail (regardless that those of us, who are familiar with the matter, do bu…

But you would also never ask such an obviously nonsensical question to a human. If someone asked me such a question my question back would be "is this a trick question?". And I think LLMs have a problem understanding trick questions.

I think that was somewhat the point of this, to simplify the future complex scenarios that can happen. Because problems that we need to use AI to solve will most of the times be ambiguous and the more complex the problem is the harder is it to pin-point why the LLM is failing to solve it.

Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

#592

Post by WarmWash »

kitd wrote: post #369
Jacques2Marais wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised, however, at how much detail humans also need to understand each other. We often want AI to just "understand" us in ways many people may not initially have understood us without extra communication.

Given that an estimated 70% of human communication is non-verbal, it's not so surprising though.

Does that stat predate the modern digital age by a number of years?

Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

#593

Post by zzzeek »

Gemini did not have this problem:

This is the ultimate "work smarter, not harder" dilemma. Since your goal is to actually wash the car, the answer depends entirely on how you plan to get the job done.

The Verdict

    Drive if: You are using a drive-through/automatic car wash or a self-service bay. It’s pretty tough to scrub a car that’s sitting in your driveway from 50 meters away. Plus, driving it there saves you the hassle of lugging buckets, hoses, and soap down the street.

    Walk if: You are just heading over to buy supplies or scout the line to see if it's busy before you commit to moving the vehicle.

Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

#594

Post by paulus_magnus2 »

prasoonds wrote: post #46

I'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…

-- OK. Added location context for the vehicle

grok works, chatgpt still fails

[1] https://chatgpt.com/share/69932b20-3eb8-8003-9d9c-b4bba53033... [2] https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk_f32dd53d-7b36-4fa2-b3...

Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

#595

Post by onionisafruit »

fireflash38 wrote: post #509
tlogan wrote: post #469

This trick went viral on TikTok last week, and it has already been patched. To get a similar result now, try saying that the distance is 45 meters or feet. The new one is with upside down glass: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP89Khv9t/

To me, the "patching" that is happening anytime some finds an absolutely glaring hole in how AIs work is so intellectually dishonest. It's the digital equivalent of house flippers slapping millennial gray paint on structural issues. It can't math correctly, so they force it to use a completely different calculator. It can't count correctly, unless you route it to a different reasoning. It feels like every other week…

Counting and math makes sense to add special tools for because it’s handy. I agree with your point that patching individual questions like this is dishonest. Although I would say it’s pointless too. The only value from asking this question is to be entertained, and “fixing” this question makes the answer less entertaining.

Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

#597

Post by PlatoIsADisease »

docere wrote: post #561

Similar "broken" common-sense reasoning also occurs in medical edge-case reasoning ( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-22940-0 ); e.g. LLMs (o1) gets the following type of question wrong: A 4-year-old boy born without a left arm, who had a right arm below elbow amputation one month ago, presents to your ED with broken legs after a motor vehicle accident. His blood pressure from his right arm is 55/30, and wa…

I put this into Grok and it got the right answer on quick mode. I did not give multiple choice though.

The real solution is to have 4 AI answer and let the human decide. If all 4 say the same thing, easy. If there is disagreement, further analysis is needed.

Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

#598

Post by ninjagoo »

polarbearballs wrote: post #539
ninjagoo wrote: post #234

I wonder if the providers are doing everyone, themselves included, a huge disservice by providing free versions of their models that are so incompetent compared to the SOTA models that these types of q&a go viral because the ai hype doesn't match the reality for unpaid users. And it's not just the viral questions that are an issue. I've seen people getting sub-optimal results for $1000+ PC comparisons from the free r…

I have paid versions of Chat-GPT and Anthropic and set them both to the best model and they both told me to walk. Claude told me: "Walk! At 25 meters, you'd barely get the car started before you arrived. It's faster and easier on foot — plus you avoid the awkwardness of driving a dirty car just a few seconds down the road."

At this point there are enough reports of people getting these problematic responses with the paid models that it is concerning. Any chance you could post screenshots?

Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

#599

Post by markstos »

tlogan wrote: post #469

This trick went viral on TikTok last week, and it has already been patched. To get a similar result now, try saying that the distance is 45 meters or feet. The new one is with upside down glass: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP89Khv9t/

Ah yes, one of those novelty reversible cups.

Re: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?

#600

Post by swat535 »

paulus_magnus2 wrote: post #594
prasoonds wrote: post #46

I'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…

-- OK. Added location context for the vehicle grok works, chatgpt still fails [1] https://chatgpt.com/share/69932b20-3eb8-8003-9d9c-b4bba53033... [2] https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk_f32dd53d-7b36-4fa2-b3...

Grok gets a lot of hate because of Musk, but it's a decent model.

I use it daily with my X account for basic tasks and think the free limits are generous. With X premium, you can get even more out of it.

Nothing beats Anthropic when it comes to coding however.

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