Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking

Re:Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking by timr on Friday July 04, 2025 @07:04PM (#44468680)

I consider the reasoning models to be primarily a development of efficiency/cost, and I thought the first one was about a year ago, but sure, ok. I don’t think it changes the argument I’m making. The LLM ourobouros / robot centipede has been done, and is not itself a path towards exponential improvement.

To be quite honest, I’ve found very little marginal value in using reasoning models for coding. Tool usage, sure, but I almost never use “reasoning” beyond that.

Also, LLMs still cannot do basic math. They can solve math exams, sure, but you can’t trust them to do a calculation in the middle of a task.

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Re:Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking by TeMPOraL on Saturday July 05, 2025 @07:40AM (#44472035)

> but you can’t trust them to do a calculation in the middle of a task.

You can't trust a person either. Calculating is its own mode of thinking; if you don't pause and context switch, you're going to get it wrong. Same is the case with LLMs.

Tool usage and reasoning and "agentic approach" are all in part ways for allowing LLM to do the context switch required, instead of taking the match challenge as it goes and blowing it.

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Re:Everything around LLMs is still magical and wishful thinking by timr on Saturday July 05, 2025 @10:15AM (#44472960)

The proper comparison is not a human, it’s a computer. Or even a human with a computer.

But my point wasn’t to judge LLMs on their (in)ability to do math - I was only responding to the parent comment’s assertion that they’ve gotten better in this area.

It’s worth noting that all of the major models still randomly decide to ignore schemas and tool calls, so even that is not a guarantee.

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