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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?

#961

Post by rluna828 »

jason_oster wrote: post #928
godelski wrote: post #921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally would stay away from calling someone, or an LLM, 'stupid' for making this mistake because of several reasons. I wouldn't. Because there's a difference between calling someone's action stupid and saying that someone is stupid. These are entirely dependent upon the context of the claim. Smart people frequently do stupid stuff. I have a PhD and by some metric that makes me "smart" but you'll also see me d…

> This is literally the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect in action. Absolutely! But there is some nuance, here. The failure mode is for an ambiguous question, which is an open research topic. There is no objectively correct answer to "Should I walk or drive?" given the provided constraints. Because handling ambiguities is a problem that researchers are actively working on, I have confidence that models will improve on these…

Producing fewer "Compiler errors" and more "broken code errors" is a fundamental failure. The cost of detecting compiler errors is lower than detecting broken code. If the cost of detecting and fixing broken code increases at the same rate as LLMs "improve" then their net benefit will remain fixed. I asked my five year old the above "brain teaser" and he got it right. I did a follow up of what should he wash at a car wash if he walked there, he said, "my hands." Chat answered with more giberish.

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

#962

Post by rluna828 »

jader201 wrote: post #679
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…

That’s not the problem with this post. The problem is that most LLM models answer it correctly (see the many other comments in this thread reporting this). OP cherry picked the few that answered it incorrectly, not mentioning any that got it right, implying that 100% of them got it wrong.

The magic of LLMs is that one llm can learn everything and then we can clone it. However, if we don't know ahead of time which one will be the best one, then we should probably keep a lot of version with real (mathematically calculated) diversity. Ironically, the DEI peeps were right all along.

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

#963

Post by rluna828 »

pvillano wrote: post #807
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…

I recently asked an AI a chemistry question which may have an extremely obvious answer. I never studied chemistry so I can't tell you if it was. I included as much information about the situation I found myself in as I could in the prompt. I wouldn't be surprised if the ai's response was based on the detail that's normally important but didn't apply to the situation, just like the 50 meters

Thanks, Excellent catch! Everyone is saying this is a "brain teaser." However, this reminded me of the LLM that thought it was the golden gate bridge. I hadn't been able to say it (or think it) succinctly. From Claude, "when we turn up the strength of the “Golden Gate Bridge” feature, Claude’s responses begin to focus on the Golden Gate Bridge. Its replies to most queries start to mention the Golden Gate Bridge, even if it’s not directly relevant." Here's the link for those interested. https://www.anthropic.com/news/golden-gate-claude

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

#964

Post by rluna828 »

biot wrote: post #689
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…

This is the LLM equivalent of a riddle, eg: “A farmer has 17 sheep. All but 9 die. How many are left?”

I think it's this: https://www.anthropic.com/news/golden-gate-claude

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

#967

Post by rluna828 »

throwuxiytayq wrote: post #305
nroets wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pattern match on the prompt (input) then (a) stuff the context with helpful hints to the LLM e.g. "Remember that a car is too heavy for a person to carry" or (b) upgrade to "thinking".

Yes, I’m sure that’s what engineers at Google are doing all day. That, and maintaining the moon landing conspiracy.

It looks like they do. https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/25/claude-4-system-prompt... They patch it in the prompt and they eventually address it in the re-enforcement training. It seems the eventual goal is to patch all of these tiny "glitches" so as to hide the lack of cognition.

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

#968

Post by Nevermark »

runarberg wrote: post #958
Nevermark wrote: post #935

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a little confused. Every year language changes. Young people, tech, adapting ideologies, words and concepts adopted from other languages, the list of language catalysts is long and pervasive. Language has never stood still.

GPs original claim was “[Machine Intelligence] already is influencing the grammar and patterns we use.” Your claim above was “AI will accelerate “natural” change in language like anything else.” Now these are different claims, but I assumed you were backing up your parent’s claim. These are far stronger claims than what you write now, in a way that it feels like you are arguing in Motte and Bailey. First of all if GP…

> These are far stronger claims than what you write now

> unless you really mean “like everything else”, in which case your claim is extremely weak

Language responds to changes in context. Books, the printing press, radio, the web, social media, mobile web, all changed how people used language and impacted language.

AI is a dramatic new context, with unique properties:

1. It is the first artifact to actively participate in realtime natural language communication. In a striking break with those predecessors.

2. AI language capabilities evolve quickly, and are unlikely to stop soon.

3. As learning during inference becomes prevalent, we will be co-adapting communication with AI in realtime.

4. Model to model communication is in its infancy, but is an entirely new category of language use, by entirely new users.

No preceding change to language context or purpose comes close.

Holding out for studies is reasonable, to determine the level of change. But statements of "not even wrong" make no sense. The default is changes in communication context and purpose, drive changes in language.

Language has never been static or unresponsive to new contexts.

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

#969

Post by LordDragonfang »

hellotomyrars wrote: post #932
roysting wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a topic that I’ve always found rather curious, especially among this kind of tech/coding community that really should be more attuned to the necessity of specificity and accuracy. There seems to be a base set of assumptions that are intrinsic to and a component of ethnicities and cultures, the things one can assume one “wouldn’t never specify when talking to a human [of one’s own ethnicity and culture].” It’s…

AI isn’t “from a different culture”. It doesn’t have culture. Any culture it does have is what it has sucked up from its training data and set in its weights. There is no need to be “humane” to AI because it possess no humanity. It has no personhood at all. It can’t feel. You can’t be inhumane to something that is literally incapable of feeling. A blade of grass has more humanity and is more deserving of respect than…

> A blade of grass has more humanity and is more deserving of respect than anything being referred to as AI does.

Emphatically disagree.

Even ignoring the obvious absurdity in this statement by pointing out that an LLM is emulating a human (quite well!) and a blade of grass is not:

I don't trust any human who can interact with something that uses the same method of communication as a human, and for all intents and purposes communicates like a human, and not feel any instinct to treat it with respect.

This is the kind of mindset that leads to dehumanizing other humans. Our brain isn't sophisticated enough to actually compartmentalize that - building the habit that it's right to treat something that talks like a sapient as if it deserves zero respect is going to have negative consequences.

Sure, you can believe it's a just a tool, and consciously let yourself treat it as one. But treat it like an incompetent intern, not a slave.

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

#970

Post by runarberg »

Nevermark wrote: post #968
runarberg wrote: post #958

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPs original claim was “[Machine Intelligence] already is influencing the grammar and patterns we use.” Your claim above was “AI will accelerate “natural” change in language like anything else.” Now these are different claims, but I assumed you were backing up your parent’s claim. These are far stronger claims than what you write now, in a way that it feels like you are arguing in Motte and Bailey. First of all if GP…

> These are far stronger claims than what you write now > unless you really mean “like everything else”, in which case your claim is extremely weak Language responds to changes in context. Books, the printing press, radio, the web, social media, mobile web, all changed how people used language and impacted language. AI is a dramatic new context, with unique properties: 1. It is the first artifact to actively particip…

My not even wrong argument was contingent on the weakest interpretation of your argument, where AI would change the language exactly like anything else in human society changes language.

> Changes in how we use language with AI will change even faster when AI starts learning continuously during inference.

This is a stronger claim, and shows that the weakest interpretation of your argument does not apply. I take not event wrong back. As this is a testable hypotheses which offers a solid prediction. I can in fact be wrong.

That said, I am skeptical of your claims for the reason stated above. People don’t interact with LLM’s nearly as much as they do with their dogs, and I am not aware of any research that shows that people who interact with a lot of dogs simplify their languages in human-to-human communication. To the contrary, there is ample research that humans are in fact quite good at context switching. You can speak extremely poorly in a second learning you are currently learning, and then in the next sentence speak fluently without hesitation in your native language.

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