I just asked ChatGPT to multiply two 4-digit numbers, and two 7-digit numbers without external help. It got both right. I'm sure it wouldn't have a 100% success rate, but saying it can't do arithmetic is just false.
Are you sure it honoured your stipulation of "without external help"? For all we know, it hacked its way into Wolfram Alpha and got the result from there.
LLMs can in fact do arithmetic, just not reliably owing to how numbers are represented probabilistically: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.21272
I just asked ChatGPT to multiply two 4-digit numbers, and two 7-digit numbers without external help. It got both right. I'm sure it wouldn't have a 100% success rate, but saying it can't do arithmetic is just false.
I tried prompt "6379 times 3875" and it was off by exactly 1000 on first try, and correct on second. 0% success rate, sample size of 1.
Are you sure it honoured your stipulation of "without external help"? For all we know, it hacked its way into Wolfram Alpha and got the result from there.
Arithmetic is well within the capabilities of even small local models: https://i.imgur.com/21tzGlN.png
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