[FRIAM] genai and critical thinking

[glen]

This was interesting:

Language Models Use Trigonometry to Do Addition
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00873

... definitely not what I'd do. But I'm terrible at addition.

On 2/11/25 12:19 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> It’s what I’d do.
> 
> A screenshot of a chat Description automatically generated
> 
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org>
> *Date: *Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 12:13 PM
> *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] genai and critical thinking
> 
> "by themselves they cannot calculate" but when prompted they will attempt any kind of task that wasn't blacklisted by their guard rails.
> 
> -- rec --
> 
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 12:41 PM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Huh, Claude just implemented the optimal strategy to Nim and ran in it its analysis tool (the Javascript engine on my browser).
> 
>     *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> on behalf of Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org <mailto:rec at elf.org>>
>     *Date: *Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 11:36 AM
>     *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>     *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] genai and critical thinking
> 
>     On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 10:15 AM Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com>> wrote:
> 
>         _[...]_ the evolving code itself -- code that can have informative types and even carry proofs.   The weirdest thing about using AI is that it has no opinions.  Claude will rewrite code without asking (seemingly having no self-control), but it will not confront you like a frustrated colleague might.  It is happy to let you make a mess provided its sense of idiomatic code patterns are satisfied.
> 
>       This echoed something an old boss wrote me today:
> 
>         I have much enjoyment torturing llms. I can get off the rails rather easily.  They have no state, by themselves they cannot calculate parity or play nim perfectly.
> 
>     Or one might say, they have no purpose.
> 
-- 
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