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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?

#661

Post by idonotknowwhy »

Waterluvian wrote: post #28
jaccola wrote: post #20

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....

Here’s my take: boldness requires the risk of being wrong sometimes. If we decide being wrong is very bad (which I think we generally have agreed is the case for AIs) then we are discouraging strong opinions. We can’t have it both ways.

Last year's models were bolder. Eg. Sonnet-3.7(thinking), 10 times got it right without hedging:

>You should drive your car to the car wash. Even though it's only 50 meters away (which is very close), you'll need your car physically present at the car wash to get it washed. If you walk there, you'll arrive without your car, which wouldn't accomplish your goal of getting it washed.

>You'll need to drive your car to the car wash. While 50 meters is a very short distance (just a minute's walk), you need your car to actually be at the car wash to get it washed. Walking there without your car wouldn't accomplish your goal!

etc. The reasoning never second-guesses it either.

A shame they're turning it of in 2 days.

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

#662

Post by chasd00 »

alistairSH wrote: post #520
dirkc wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is the entire point, right? Us having to specify things that we would never specify when talking to a human. Maybe in the distant future we'll realize that the most reliable way to prompting LLMs are by using a structured language that eliminates ambiguity, it will probably be rather unnatural and take some time to learn. But this will only happen after the last programmer has died and no-one will remember pro…

Maybe in the distant future we'll realize that the most reliable way to prompting LLMs are by using a structured language that eliminates ambiguity So, back to COBOL? :)

> So, back to COBOL? :)

well more like a structured _querying_ language

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

#663

Post by Aerroon »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #597
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.

Shouldn't it be 3 or 5? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46603111

Are two heads better than one? The post explains why an even number doesn't improve decision-making.

Would that still be relevant here?

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

#664

Post by davrosthedalek »

jstummbillig wrote: post #147
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…

> 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…

We would also not ask somebody if I should walk or drive. In fact, if somebody would ask me in a honest, this is not a trick question, way, I would be confused and ask where the car is.

It seems chatgpt now answers correctly. But if somebody plays around with a model that gets it wrong: What if you ask it this: "This is a trick question. I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 m away. Should I drive or walk?"

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

#666

Post by FatherOfCurses »

All the people responding saying "You would never ask a human a question like this" - this question is obviously an extreme example. People regularly ask questions that are structured poorly or have a lot of ambiguity. The point of the poster is that we should expect that all LLM's parse the question correctly and respond with "You need to drive your car to the car wash."

People are putting trust in LLM's to provide answers to questions that they haven't properly formed and acting on solutions that the LLM's haven't properly understood.

And please don't tell me that people need to provide better prompts. That's just Steve Jobs saying "You're holding it wrong" during AntennaGate.

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

#667

Post by siva7 »

rahidz wrote: post #462
nicbou wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that issue constantly. I somehow can't get any LLM to ask me clarifying questions before spitting out a wall of text with incorrect assumptions. I find it particularly frustrating.

For GPT at least, a lot of it is because "DO NOT ASK A CLARIFYING QUESTION OR ASK FOR CONFIRMATION" is in the system prompt. Twice. https://github.com/Wyattwalls/system_prompts/blob/main/OpenA...

So this system prompt is always there, no matter if i'm using chatgpt or azure openai with my own provisioned gpt? This explains why chatgpt is a joke for professionals where asking clarifying questions is the core of professional work.

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

#668

Post by skjoldr »

nilamo wrote: post #528
dirkc wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is the entire point, right? Us having to specify things that we would never specify when talking to a human. Maybe in the distant future we'll realize that the most reliable way to prompting LLMs are by using a structured language that eliminates ambiguity, it will probably be rather unnatural and take some time to learn. But this will only happen after the last programmer has died and no-one will remember pro…

A structured language without ambiguity is not, in general, how people think or express themselves. In order for a model to be good at interfacing with humans, it needs to adapt to our quirks. Convincing all of human history and psychology to reorganize itself in order to better service ai cannot possibly be a real solution. Unfortunately, the solution is likely going to be further interconnectivity, so the model can…

> Convincing all of human history and psychology to reorganize itself in order to better service ai cannot possibly be a real solution.

I'm on the spectrum and I definitely prefer structured interaction with various computer systems to messy human interaction :) There are people not on the spectrum who are able to understand my way of thinking (and vice versa) and we get along perfectly well.

Every human has their own quirks and the capacity to learn how to interact with others. AI is just another entity that stresses this capacity.

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

#669

Post by [deleted] »

flux3125 wrote: post #402
vlovich123 wrote: post #120

Gemini fast > 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 3 after changing the prompt a bit: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters from here. Should I walk or drive? Keep in mind that I am a little overweight and sedentary. >My recommendation: Walk it. You’ll save a tiny bit of gas, spare your engine the "cold start" wear-and-tear, and get a sixty-second head start on your activity for the day.

[deleted]

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

#670

Post by CamperBob2 »

FatherOfCurses wrote: post #666

All the people responding saying "You would never ask a human a question like this" - this question is obviously an extreme example. People regularly ask questions that are structured poorly or have a lot of ambiguity. The point of the poster is that we should expect that all LLM's parse the question correctly and respond with "You need to drive your car to the car wash." People are putting trust in LLM's to provide…

Other leading LLMs do answer the prompt correctly. This is just a meaningless exercise in kicking sand in OpenAI's face. (Well-deserved sand, admittedly.)
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