It will NEVER consistently give you only the value in the response. It will always eventually add in some introductory text like it’s talking to a human. No matter how many times I tried to get it to just give me back the answer alone, it never consistently did.
ChatGPT is terrible with numbers. It can’t count, do math, none of that. So asking it to do byte math is asking for a world of hurt.
have you ever wanted your calculator to be able to be wrong like a human?
Like, not just calculating the wrong answer or returning an error, i mean outright brainfart and just giving a nonsense answer
Observation 1: ChatGPT is designed to provide context for responses to enhance clarity for human users. Requests for answers without accompanying text may result in inconsistent behavior due to its conversational model. It is not optimized for providing pure data outputs without context.
Observation 2: ChatGPT is not inherently equipped to perform complex mathematical operations with high reliability. Numerical inaccuracies or rounding errors may occur due to the model’s structure. While capable of basic arithmetic, it is not a specialized tool for precise calculations, particularly in domains like byte math, where accuracy is critical.
I know a guy who was working on something like this, they just had the call to the model loop until the response met whatever criteria the code needed (e.g. one single number, a specifically formatted table, viable code, etc) or exit after a number of failed attempts. That seemed to work pretty well, it might mess up from time to time but it’s unlikely to (with the right prompt) do so repeatedly when asked again.
That’s a good approach. I think for my use case the struggle was trying to not use a ton of tokens (upper management was being stingy on that front). I kept trying to push to make it more robust but you know how those things go. Axed ahead of their time or zombified.
For 1, that’s why you say “Format your answer in this exact sentence: The number of bytes required (rounded up) is exactly # bytes., where # is the number of bytes.” And then regex for that sentence. What could go wrong?
Also, it can do math somewhat consistently if you let it show its work, but I still wouldn’t rely on it as a cog in code execution. It’s not nearly reliable enough for that.
From my experience with ChatGPT:
If this isn’t joke code, that is scary.
I refuse to believe you are not certain this is a joke
I know it is, but I’ve also seen people try to use ChatGPT for similar things as a serious endeavor.
Friendly reminder that CalcGPT exists
Neat! Never seen this one before.
Where’s my 1 million dollars?
how is it different from a calculator or say a Python REPL? i’m asking b/c i’m too old to try out young folks inefficiently engineered “solutions”.
You input some text, chatGPT guesses the answer using the linear algebra that powers LLMs
The project was made as a satire of companies putting AI into everything
have you ever wanted your calculator to be able to be wrong like a human?
Like, not just calculating the wrong answer or returning an error, i mean outright brainfart and just giving a nonsense answer
Response:
Observation 1: ChatGPT is designed to provide context for responses to enhance clarity for human users. Requests for answers without accompanying text may result in inconsistent behavior due to its conversational model. It is not optimized for providing pure data outputs without context.
Observation 2: ChatGPT is not inherently equipped to perform complex mathematical operations with high reliability. Numerical inaccuracies or rounding errors may occur due to the model’s structure. While capable of basic arithmetic, it is not a specialized tool for precise calculations, particularly in domains like byte math, where accuracy is critical.
Statement acknowledged.
I know a guy who was working on something like this, they just had the call to the model loop until the response met whatever criteria the code needed (e.g. one single number, a specifically formatted table, viable code, etc) or exit after a number of failed attempts. That seemed to work pretty well, it might mess up from time to time but it’s unlikely to (with the right prompt) do so repeatedly when asked again.
That’s a good approach. I think for my use case the struggle was trying to not use a ton of tokens (upper management was being stingy on that front). I kept trying to push to make it more robust but you know how those things go. Axed ahead of their time or zombified.
For 1, that’s why you say “Format your answer in this exact sentence:
The number of bytes required (rounded up) is exactly # bytes.
, where # is the number of bytes.” And then regex for that sentence. What could go wrong?Also, it can do math somewhat consistently if you let it show its work, but I still wouldn’t rely on it as a cog in code execution. It’s not nearly reliable enough for that.