Ask Lemmy
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LLMs don't and can't do math. They don't calculate anything, that's just not how they work. Instead, they do this:
It could be right, it could be wrong. If there's enough pattern in the training data, it could remember the correct answer. Otherwise it'll just place a plausible looking value there (behavior known as AI hallucination). So, you can not "trust" it.
Every LLM answer is a hallucination.
Some are just realistic to the point of being correct. It frightens me how many users have no idea about any of that.
A good one will interpret what you are asking and then write code, often python I notice, and then let that do the math and return the answer. A math problem should use a math engine and that's how it gets around it.
But really why bother, go ask wolfram alpha or just write the math problem in code yourself.
They calculate the statistical probability of the next token in an array of previous tokens