7 ms·

Did you look at the examples? There's a big difference between "if I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have" which

Did you look at the examples? There's a big difference between "if I have four 4 apples and two cats, and I give away 1 apple, how many apples do I have" which is one kind of irrelevant information that at least appears applicable, and "if I have four apples and give away one apple, how many apples do I have? Also, did you know cats use their tails to help balance?", which really wouldn't confuse most humans.

lupusreal 1y ago
Any kind of distraction is likely to impact human test scores, unless the test is well below their level or they're otherwise very comfortable with the subject matter. Math specifically makes most of the general public feel a bit in over their head, so tossing random cat facts into the mix is going to get people more confused and nervous. Maybe I'm totally wrong about that, but they really should have tested humans too, without that context this result seems lacking.
metalman 1y ago
"wouldn't confuse most humans", yes but no first presumption is that we are talking about humans doing math, in some sort of internet setting. second presumption is that this human has been effected by the significant percentage of the internet devoted to cats and that there response is going to be likely frustration and outrage at cats invading math, or massive relief in having cat meems worked into something otherwise tedious and then the third presumption is that a large number of "humans" wont be aware of the cats in math thing, because they imediatly offloaded the task to an LLM
wagwang 1y ago
Yes, especially interview questions that include a stupid "real life example" that is usually irrelevant to the question.
krisoft 1y ago
> which really wouldn't confuse most humans And i think it would. I think a lot of people would ask the invigilator to see if something is wrong with the test, or maybe answer both questions, or write a short answer on the cat question too or get confused and give up. That is the kind of question where if it were put to a test I would expect kids to start squirming, looking at each other and the teacher, right as they reach that one. I’m not sure how big this effect is, but it would be very surprising if there is no effect and unsuspecting, and unwarned people perform the same on the “normal” and the “distractions” test. Especially if the information is phrased as a question like in your example. I heard it from teachers that students get distracted if they add irrelevant details to word problems. This is obviously anecdotal, but the teachers who I chatted about this thought it is because people are trained through their whole education that all elements of world problems must be used. So when they add extra bits people’s minds desperately try to use it. But the point is not that i’m right. Maybe i’m totaly wrong. The point is that if the paper want to state as a fact one way or an other they should have performed an experiment. Or cite prior research. Or avoided stating an unsubstantiated opinion about human behaviour and stick to describing the AI.
- diamond559 1y ago
  Yeah you're right, if that human is 5 years old or has crippling ADHD.
  - krisoft 1y ago
    You can argue until the cows come home. The point is that they claim without evidence that humans are not suspectible to this kind of distraction. If they want to estabilish this as a fact there is a trivialy easy experiment they can conduct. “Someone on hacker news strongly feels it is true, and is willing to argue the case with witty comments.” is not how scientific knowledge is estabilished. We either have done the experiments and have the data, or we don’t.
    - imtringued 1y ago
      The answer is three apples.
  - ACCount36 1y ago
    You think too highly of humans. Humans are not reliable. For every "no human would make this kind of mistake", you can find dozens to hundreds of thousands of instances of humans making this kind of mistake.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      That's just because there's a lot of humans and we're doing a lot of things, all the time. Humans are pretty good at not making mistakes in high-reasoning scenarios. The problem is that humans make mistakes in everything pretty constantly. Like, even saying a word - people say the wrong word all the time. So when we look at really easy tasks that can be trivially automated, like say adding 2 + 2, we say "humans are so stupid! Computer is smart!". Because humans get 2 + 2 wrong 1% of the time, but computers always get it right. But, as we know, this isn't how it works. Actually, humans are much smarter than computers, and it's not even close. Because intelligence is multi-dimensional. The thing is, that failure rate for humans stays pretty constant as the complexity of the task increases, to a degree. Whereas computers start failing more and more, and quickly. It's a very, VERY sharp cliff for algorithms. LLMs take the cliff further, but they do not eliminate it.
CJefferson 1y ago
As someone who has written and graded a lot of University exams, I'm sure a decent number of students would write the wrong answer to that. A bunch of students would write 5 (adding all the numbers). Others would write "3 apples and 2 cats", which is technically not what I'm looking for (but personally I would give full marks for, some wouldn't). Many students clear try to answer exams by pattern matching, and I've seen a lot of exams of students "matching" on a pattern based on one word on a question and doing something totally wrong.
- viccis 1y ago
  I agree that poor test takers are easily distracted, and this is the reason that "word problems" are heavily emphasized in preparation for tests like the SAT or state proficiency exams. But in general I do not think these models are claiming at being good at replicating the performance of a distracted or otherwise low performing pupil. I think they should be evaluated against humans who are capable of completing word problems containing context that is not inherently necessary to the math question. The reason those tests I mentioned use these word problems is that it's a way to evaluate someone's ability to think in abstract mathematical terms about everyday situations, which obviously involve lots of unimportant information the person must choose to consider or not. tl;dr: I think a reasonably competent high school student could answer the apple and cat question, which is absolutely a reasonable bar for an LLM to clear. If university students are failing these questions, then they have not been taught test taking skills, which should be considered a mathematical failure just as unacceptable as that of the LLM, not a mitigating similarity for the latter.
- jaccola 1y ago
  Parents whole point is contrary to this (they agree with you), the context didn't even include numbers to pattern match on!
  - CJefferson 1y ago
    Sorry, I failed at pattern matching myself :) However, I still think any irrelevant facts would upset a number of exam takers, and claiming it "clearly" wouldn't is far too strong a claim to make without evidence.
wongarsu 1y ago
If asked verbally that would absolutely confuse some humans. Easily enough to triple the error rate for that specific question (granted, that's easier than the actual questions, but still). Even in a written test with time pressure it would probably still have a statistically significant effect
- lawlessone 1y ago
  a human would immediately identify it as a trick.
- cantor_S_drug 1y ago
  Is the model thinking what is cat doing here? Then start thinking it is being tested?
  - lawlessone 1y ago
    Even if the model "ignores" it. Won't the presence of the irrelevant text alter the probability of its output in some way?
  - Detrytus 1y ago
    I wonder if the problem here is simply hitting some internal quota on compute resources? Like, if you send the model on wild goose chase with irrelevant information it wastes enough compute time on it that it fails to arrive at correct answer to main question.
    - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
      Possibly. But could indicate that initial tokens set the direction or the path model could go down into. Just like when a person mentions two distinct topics in conversation nearby, the listener decides which topic to continue with.
  - wongarsu 1y ago
    I have no clue what the model is thinking, and as far as I can tell the paper also makes no attempt at answering that. It's also not really the point, the point is more that the claim in the paper that humans would be unaffected is unsubstantiated and highly suspect. I'd even say more likely wrong than right
graeme 1y ago
It absolutely would if you start hitting working memory constraints. And at the margins some people who would be 50:50 on a given math problem will have working memory constraints.

lupusreal 1y ago

Any kind of distraction is likely to impact human test scores, unless the test is well below their level or they're otherwise very comfortable with the subject matter. Math specifically makes most of the general public feel a bit in over their head, so tossing random cat facts into the mix is going to get people more confused and nervous. Maybe I'm totally wrong about that, but they really should have tested humans too, without that context this result seems lacking.

metalman 1y ago

"wouldn't confuse most humans", yes but no first presumption is that we are talking about humans doing math, in some sort of internet setting. second presumption is that this human has been effected by the significant percentage of the internet devoted to cats and that there response is going to be likely frustration and outrage at cats invading math, or massive relief in having cat meems worked into something otherwise tedious and then the third presumption is that a large number of "humans" wont be aware of the cats in math thing, because they imediatly offloaded the task to an LLM

wagwang 1y ago

Yes, especially interview questions that include a stupid "real life example" that is usually irrelevant to the question.

krisoft 1y ago

> which really wouldn't confuse most humans And i think it would. I think a lot of people would ask the invigilator to see if something is wrong with the test, or maybe answer both questions, or write a short answer on the cat question too or get confused and give up. That is the kind of question where if it were put to a test I would expect kids to start squirming, looking at each other and the teacher, right as they reach that one. I’m not sure how big this effect is, but it would be very surprising if there is no effect and unsuspecting, and unwarned people perform the same on the “normal” and the “distractions” test. Especially if the information is phrased as a question like in your example. I heard it from teachers that students get distracted if they add irrelevant details to word problems. This is obviously anecdotal, but the teachers who I chatted about this thought it is because people are trained through their whole education that all elements of world problems must be used. So when they add extra bits people’s minds desperately try to use it. But the point is not that i’m right. Maybe i’m totaly wrong. The point is that if the paper want to state as a fact one way or an other they should have performed an experiment. Or cite prior research. Or avoided stating an unsubstantiated opinion about human behaviour and stick to describing the AI.

diamond559 1y ago
Yeah you're right, if that human is 5 years old or has crippling ADHD.
- krisoft 1y ago
  You can argue until the cows come home. The point is that they claim without evidence that humans are not suspectible to this kind of distraction. If they want to estabilish this as a fact there is a trivialy easy experiment they can conduct. “Someone on hacker news strongly feels it is true, and is willing to argue the case with witty comments.” is not how scientific knowledge is estabilished. We either have done the experiments and have the data, or we don’t.
  - imtringued 1y ago
    The answer is three apples.
- ACCount36 1y ago
  You think too highly of humans. Humans are not reliable. For every "no human would make this kind of mistake", you can find dozens to hundreds of thousands of instances of humans making this kind of mistake.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    That's just because there's a lot of humans and we're doing a lot of things, all the time. Humans are pretty good at not making mistakes in high-reasoning scenarios. The problem is that humans make mistakes in everything pretty constantly. Like, even saying a word - people say the wrong word all the time. So when we look at really easy tasks that can be trivially automated, like say adding 2 + 2, we say "humans are so stupid! Computer is smart!". Because humans get 2 + 2 wrong 1% of the time, but computers always get it right. But, as we know, this isn't how it works. Actually, humans are much smarter than computers, and it's not even close. Because intelligence is multi-dimensional. The thing is, that failure rate for humans stays pretty constant as the complexity of the task increases, to a degree. Whereas computers start failing more and more, and quickly. It's a very, VERY sharp cliff for algorithms. LLMs take the cliff further, but they do not eliminate it.

CJefferson 1y ago

As someone who has written and graded a lot of University exams, I'm sure a decent number of students would write the wrong answer to that. A bunch of students would write 5 (adding all the numbers). Others would write "3 apples and 2 cats", which is technically not what I'm looking for (but personally I would give full marks for, some wouldn't). Many students clear try to answer exams by pattern matching, and I've seen a lot of exams of students "matching" on a pattern based on one word on a question and doing something totally wrong.

viccis 1y ago
I agree that poor test takers are easily distracted, and this is the reason that "word problems" are heavily emphasized in preparation for tests like the SAT or state proficiency exams. But in general I do not think these models are claiming at being good at replicating the performance of a distracted or otherwise low performing pupil. I think they should be evaluated against humans who are capable of completing word problems containing context that is not inherently necessary to the math question. The reason those tests I mentioned use these word problems is that it's a way to evaluate someone's ability to think in abstract mathematical terms about everyday situations, which obviously involve lots of unimportant information the person must choose to consider or not. tl;dr: I think a reasonably competent high school student could answer the apple and cat question, which is absolutely a reasonable bar for an LLM to clear. If university students are failing these questions, then they have not been taught test taking skills, which should be considered a mathematical failure just as unacceptable as that of the LLM, not a mitigating similarity for the latter.
jaccola 1y ago
Parents whole point is contrary to this (they agree with you), the context didn't even include numbers to pattern match on!
- CJefferson 1y ago
  Sorry, I failed at pattern matching myself :) However, I still think any irrelevant facts would upset a number of exam takers, and claiming it "clearly" wouldn't is far too strong a claim to make without evidence.

wongarsu 1y ago

If asked verbally that would absolutely confuse some humans. Easily enough to triple the error rate for that specific question (granted, that's easier than the actual questions, but still). Even in a written test with time pressure it would probably still have a statistically significant effect

lawlessone 1y ago
a human would immediately identify it as a trick.
cantor_S_drug 1y ago
Is the model thinking what is cat doing here? Then start thinking it is being tested?
- lawlessone 1y ago
  Even if the model "ignores" it. Won't the presence of the irrelevant text alter the probability of its output in some way?
- Detrytus 1y ago
  I wonder if the problem here is simply hitting some internal quota on compute resources? Like, if you send the model on wild goose chase with irrelevant information it wastes enough compute time on it that it fails to arrive at correct answer to main question.
  - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
    Possibly. But could indicate that initial tokens set the direction or the path model could go down into. Just like when a person mentions two distinct topics in conversation nearby, the listener decides which topic to continue with.
- wongarsu 1y ago
  I have no clue what the model is thinking, and as far as I can tell the paper also makes no attempt at answering that. It's also not really the point, the point is more that the claim in the paper that humans would be unaffected is unsubstantiated and highly suspect. I'd even say more likely wrong than right

graeme 1y ago

It absolutely would if you start hitting working memory constraints. And at the margins some people who would be 50:50 on a given math problem will have working memory constraints.