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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?

#871

Post by ninjagoo »

As it turns out, IMHO, the debate in this thread is about 1 year behind the reality [1]. Personally, I was about a week behind in my reading of the landscape, so didn't realize this is all asked and answered [1].

A number of points that various folks have made in the posts in this thread - free vs paid capabilities, model choices etc. are addressed much more eloquently and coherently in this blog post by Matt Shumer [1]. Discussed here on HN at [2] but like me, many others must have missed it.

[1] https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46973011

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

#872

Post by sunaookami »

cm2187 wrote: post #137
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…

What is the version used by the free chatgpt now? ( https://chatgpt.com/ ) > Since the car wash is only 50 meters away (about 55 yards), you should walk. > Here’s why: > - It’ll take less than a minute. > - No fuel wasted. > - Better for the environment. > - You avoid the irony of driving your dirty car 50 meters just to wash it. the last bullet point is amusing, it understands you intend to wash the car you drive bu…

Gemini 3 Flash answers tongue-in-cheek with a table of pro & cons where one of the cons of walking is that you are at the car wash but your car is still at your home and recommends to drive it if I don't have an "extremely long brush" or don't want to push it to the car wash. Kinda funny.

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

#873

Post by toxik »

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…

I agree, it's a bit of a trick question. It's really hard to imply the car's location without ruining the test though. Here's my attempt, which Claude Opus 4.6 had no problem with:

Alice drives home after a long day at work, exhausted she pulls into her driveway when she realizes she needs to go to a car inspection appointment. She goes into the house to get her paperwork before she leaves. The mechanic is only 100 meters away. How should she get there, walk or drive?

> She should *drive*, since she needs the car at the mechanic’s for the inspection.

Haiku 3.5 and Sonnet 4.5 fail consistently. Opus 4.5 also passes with the correct analysis as above.

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

#874

Post by Windchaser »

nkrisc wrote: post #410
londons_explore wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we fed it the whole internet and every library as training data... By now it should know this stuff.

Even I don’t “know” how many “R”s there are in “strawberry”. I don’t keep that information in my brain. What I do keep is the spelling of the word “strawberry” and the skill of being able to count so that I can derive the answer to that question anytime I need.

Right. The equivalent here, for this problem, would be something like asking for context. And the LLM response should've been:

"Well, you need your car to be at the car wash in order to wash it, right?"

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

#875

Post by toxik »

cush wrote: post #800
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…

Chat GPT 5.2 also told me to walk, but only because it made the assumption that because I was even asking the question, I must have multiple cars, and one of my cars was already at the car wash being washed. I clarified and said "I only have one car", and it replied that I obviously need to drive. --- GPT 5.2 Walk. Driving 50 m just adds friction: starting a cold engine, waiting, maneuvering, then immediately stoppin…

The problem is that by specifying this, you have tipped your hand that there is something strange about the plan to walk. I think this is the original problem too: the question implies walking is even an option.

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

#876

Post by Loughla »

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…

>People regularly ask questions that are structured poorly or have a lot of ambiguity.

The difference between someone who is really good with LLM's and someone who isn't is the same as someone who's really good with technical writing or working with other people.

Communication. Clear, concise communication.

And my parents said I would never use my English degree.

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

#877

Post by Windchaser »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #373
pickleRick243 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also why would you ask whether you should walk or drive if the car is at home? Either way the answer is obvious, and there is no way to interpret it except as a trick question. Of course, the parsimonious assumption is that the car is at home so assuming that the car is at the car wash is a questionable choice to say the least (otherwise there would be 2 cars in the situation, which the question doesn't mention).

I think a good rule of thumb is to default to assuming a question is asked in good faith (i.e. it's not a trick question). That goes for human beings and chat/AI models. In fact, it's particularly true for AI models because the question could have been generated by some kind of automated process. e.g. I write my schedule out and then ask the model to plan my day. The "go 50 metres to car wash" bit might just be a ste…

> I think a good rule of thumb is to default to assuming a question is asked in good faith (i.e. it's not a trick question).

Sure, as a default this is fine. But when things don't make sense, the first thing you do is toss those default assumptions (and probably we have some internal ranking of which ones to toss first).

The normal human response to this question would not be to take it as a genuine question. For most of us, this quickly trips into "this is a trick question".

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

#878

Post by hi_hi »

Is it just me, or does there appear to be a big gap in how people understand this works?

There is no magic here. Replace "car" with some nonsense word the LLM hasn't encountered before. It will completely ignore the small amount of nonsense you have provided, and confidently tell you to walk, while assuming you are talking about a car. I'm fairly confident the first time this was tried using "car", it told them to walk.

"I want to wash my flobbergammer. The flobbergammer wash place is only 50 meters away. should I drive or walk."

Reply:

If it’s only *50 meters away*, definitely *walk*.

That’s about a 30–45 second walk for most people. Driving would likely:

* Take longer (getting in, starting the car, parking) * Waste fuel * Add unnecessary wear to your car * Be objectively funny in a “why did I do this” kind of way

The only reasons to drive would be:

* The flobbergammer is extremely heavy * Severe weather * You have mobility limitations

Otherwise, enjoy the short stroll. Your future self will approve.

Via chatGPT free tier. Paid Claude Sonnet 4.5 Extended gives me:

For just 50 meters, you should definitely walk! That's an incredibly short distance - less than a minute on foot. By the time you'd get in your car, start it, drive, and park, you could have already walked there and back. Plus, you'd avoid the hassle of finding parking for such a short trip. Walking is easier, faster, better for the environment, and you'll get a bit of movement in. Save the car for longer distances!

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

#879

Post by Windchaser »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #297
cm2187 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the version used by the free chatgpt now? ( https://chatgpt.com/ ) > Since the car wash is only 50 meters away (about 55 yards), you should walk. > Here’s why: > - It’ll take less than a minute. > - No fuel wasted. > - Better for the environment. > - You avoid the irony of driving your dirty car 50 meters just to wash it. the last bullet point is amusing, it understands you intend to wash the car you drive bu…

I think this shows that LLMs do NOT 'understand' anything.

> I think this shows that LLMs do NOT 'understand' anything.

It shows these LLMs don't understand what's necessary for washing your car. But I don't see how that generalizes to "LLMs do NOT 'understand' anything".

What's your reasoning, there? Why does this show that LLMs don't understand anything at all?

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

#880

Post by Nevermark »

runarberg wrote: post #700
idiotsecant wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's very likely that machine intelligence will influence human language. It already is influencing the grammar and patterns we use.

I think such influence will be extremely minimal, like confined to dozens of new nouns and verbs, but no real change in grammar, etc. Interactions between humans and computers in natural language for your average person is much much less then the interactions between that same person and their dog. Humans also speak in natural language to their dogs, they simplify their speech, use extreme intonation and emphasis, in…

> I think such influence will be extremely minimal.

AI will accelerate “natural” change in language like anything else.

And as AI changes our environment (mentally, socially, and inevitably physically) we will change and change our language.

But what will be interesting is the rise of agent to agent communication via human languages. As that kind of communication shows up in training sets, there will be a powerful eigenvector of change we can’t predict. Other than that it’s the path of efficient communication for them, and we are likely to pick up on those changes as from any other source of change.

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