Sure, but for what purpose would you ever ask about the total number of a specific letter in a word? This isn’t the gotcha that so many think it is. The LLM answers like it does because it makes perfect sense for someone to ask if a word is spelled with a single or double “r”.
Except many many experts have said this is not why it happens. It cannot count letters in the incoming words. It doesn’t even know what “words” are. It has abstracted tokens by the time it’s being run through the model.
It’s more like you don’t know the word strawberry, and instead you see:
How many 'r’s in 🍓?
And you respond with nonsense, because the relation between ‘r’ and 🍓 is nonsensical.
Sure, but for what purpose would you ever ask about the total number of a specific letter in a word? This isn’t the gotcha that so many think it is. The LLM answers like it does because it makes perfect sense for someone to ask if a word is spelled with a single or double “r”.
Except many many experts have said this is not why it happens. It cannot count letters in the incoming words. It doesn’t even know what “words” are. It has abstracted tokens by the time it’s being run through the model.
It’s more like you don’t know the word strawberry, and instead you see: How many 'r’s in 🍓?
And you respond with nonsense, because the relation between ‘r’ and 🍓 is nonsensical.
It makes perfect sense if you do mental acrobatics to explain why a wrong answer is actually correct.
Not mental acrobatics, just common sense.