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1 day agoThis reminds me of learning a shortcut in math class but also knowing that the lesson didn’t cover that particular method. So, I use the shortcut to get the answer on a multiple choice question, but I use method from the lesson when asked to show my work. (e.g. Pascal’s Pyramid vs Binomial Expansion).
It might not seem like a shortcut for us, but something about this LLM’s training makes it easier to use heuristics. That’s actually a pretty big deal for a machine to choose fuzzy logic over algorithms when it knows that the teacher wants it to use the algorithm.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s Markov chains all the way down.
The only way I can think to test this would be to “poison” the training data with faulty arithmetic to see if it is just recalling precedent or actually implementing an algorithm.