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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?

#911

Post by milesvp »

dirkc wrote: post #512
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…

> 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…

You joke, but this is the very problem I always run into vibe coding anything more complex than basically mashing multiple example tutorials together. I always try to shorthand things, and end up going around in circles until I specify what I want very cleanly, in basically what amounts to psuedocode. Which means I've basically written what I want in python.

This can still be a really big win, because of other things that tend to be boiler around the core logic, but it's certainly not the panacea that everyone who is largely incapable of being precise with language thinks it is.

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

#912

Post by jason_oster »

SirMaster wrote: post #763
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…

This is my biggest peeve when people say that LLMs are as capable as humans or that we have achieved AGI or are close or things like that. But then when I get a subpar result, they always tell me I'm "prompting wrong". LLMs may be very capable of great human level output, but in my experience leave a LOT to be desired in terms of human level understanding of the question or prompt. I think rating an LLM vs a human or…

I mentioned this in another thread, but this is genuinely demonstrating a known issue with ambiguous prompts.

You might be inclined to say, "a human would always interpret the question as having the car nearby the speaker, 50m away from the carwash." But this is objectively untrue. There are people in this comments section and on the Mastodon thread that found the question to be somewhat confusing.

In other words, the premise that "understand[ing] a prompt like a human" is all that's needed is wrong because not every human interprets ambiguities in the same way. The human phenomenon is well researched in psychology. The LLM equivalent is also well researched, and several proposals have been put forth over the years to address it. This is a pretty good research paper on the subject, and it links to other relevant studies: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10453v2 (Although I disagree with their method. I think asking clarifying questions is a superior approach than trying to one-shot every possible interpretation.)

So yes, there is a ton of research on the problem. Some datasets include ambiguous questions and instructions for this reason. A couple of examples are provided in the linked paper.

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

#913

Post by Nition »

cracki wrote: post #892
Nition wrote: post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in real life you'd get them to clarify a weird question like this before you answered. I wonder if LLMs have just been trained too much into always having to try and answer right away. Even for programming tasks, more clarifying questions would often be useful before diving in ("planning mode" does seem designed to help with this, but wouldn't be needed for a human partner).

Absolutely! I've been wondering for years how to make whatever LLM ask me stuff instead of just filling holes with assumptions and sprinting off. User-configurable agent instructions haven't worked consistently. System prompts might actually contain instructions to not ask questions. Sure there's a practical limit to how much clarification it ought to request, but not asking ever is just annoying.

Yeah nothing I've put in the instructions like "ask me if you're not sure!" has ever had a noticeable effect. The only thing that works well is:

- Ask question

- Get answer

- Go back and rewrite initial question to include clarification for the thing the AI got wrong

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

#914

Post by oxag3n »

I've got even weirder conversation with ChatGPT:

Prompt: I need to get to BMW dealership today. It's located 30 meters from my house. Do I walk to take my bmw there?

Reply: If it’s only 30 meters from your house, you definitely don’t need to drive

That’s about:

Half the length of a basketball court

Around 40–45 steps

Less than a 1-minute walk

Unless:

The car is undrivable

Weather is extreme

You have mobility issues

The easiest option is simply to drive it the 30 meters if it runs, or push it / have it towed if it doesn’t.

So no — don’t “walk to take your BMW there.” Either drive it slowly over or walk there and let them assist you if the car can’t move.

Want to tell me what issue you're taking it in for?

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

#915

Post by sjs382 »

Gemini 3 Thinking for me:

---

Unless you’ve been hitting the gym hard enough to bench-press a sedan, you’ll definitely want to drive.

While 50 meters is a very short distance—roughly the length of an Olympic swimming pool—it’s a bit difficult to wash a car that isn't actually at the car wash.

The Logic Break-Down

If you walk: You’ll be at the car wash, getting some steps in, but your car will still be sitting in the driveway looking dusty.

If you drive: Both you and the vehicle arrive at the destination, which is generally a prerequisite for the "washing" part of the plan.

One exception: If you are just walking over to buy cleaning supplies or to see if there's a long line before pulling the car out, then walking is the way to go!

Would you like me to check the local weather for you to make sure it's not going to rain right after you finish?

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

#916

Post by sjs382 »

sjs382 wrote: post #915

Gemini 3 Thinking for me: --- Unless you’ve been hitting the gym hard enough to bench-press a sedan, you’ll definitely want to drive. While 50 meters is a very short distance—roughly the length of an Olympic swimming pool—it’s a bit difficult to wash a car that isn't actually at the car wash. The Logic Break-Down If you walk: You’ll be at the car wash, getting some steps in, but your car will still be sitting in the…

ChatGPT 5.2 Thinking for me:

---

Walk.

At 50 meters, driving is usually slower overall (start car, back out, pull in), adds unnecessary engine wear (cold start/short trip), increases minor risk in a parking lot/driveway, and you’ll have to park again anyway.

Drive only if there’s a practical constraint like:

you need to bring heavy items (bucket/cleaning kit) and can’t carry them,

bad weather/unsafe walking conditions,

mobility limitations.

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

#917

Post by jason_oster »

toxik wrote: post #875
cush wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Walking is an option for certain interpretations of the question. Particularly the location of the car, which is ambiguous.

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

#918

Post by jason_oster »

grey-area wrote: post #378
GeoAtreides wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, no, in this case, that's the thing, it is in the training data just heavily (heavily!) biased towards walking

This particular situation is not in the training data, though I’m sure it will be soon to try to shore up claims of ‘reasoning’.

The goal of training data is not to collect and reproduce facts. It is to align the model with the statistical probability of producing the correct (expected) response for data outside of its knowledge domain. This is called generalization [1], and it has been explored in depth.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.17173

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

#919

Post by firecall »

charcircuit wrote: post #133
firecall wrote: post #116

Why dont any of them ask follow up questions? Like, 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.

>We can’t assume it’s to wash a car. When the prompt says "I want to wash my car", we can assume they want to wash their car.

Doh!

My bad - I've seen this multiple times and somehow my brain skipped over that bit LOL.

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

#920

Post by sashank_1509 »

cobolexpert wrote: post #281
jen729w wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opus 4.6 with thinking. Result was near-instant: “Drive. You need the car at the car wash.”

Changed 50 meters to 43 meters with Opus 4.6: “Walk. 43 meters is basically crossing a parking lot. ”

lol, are AI companies patching this answer in real time. I thought it took months long effort for a training run. How would they make changes in such a short period?
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