Why are we using LLMs as calculators?

So why are we trying to get these enormous models, good for natural text completion tasks like summarization, translation, and writing poems, to multiply three-digit numbers and, what’s more, attempt to return the results as a number?

Two reasons:

• Humans always try to use any new software/hardware we invent to do calculation
• We don’t actually want them to do math for the sake of replacing calculators, we want to understand if they can reason their way to AGI.

Source: Why are we using LLMs as calculators?