Monday 29 May 2023

Chautauqua 0.

I've been very busy, hence disappearing for months, I am now preparing a series of posts about the ongoing singularity. However I've been using GPT3.5 and 4 as an assistant at work and am eagerly awaiting the incorporation of GPT4 into Office 365 as the Office Co-Pilot.

Anyway, here's something I just tried with both GPT3.5 and 4, I am currently using both at work, but doing so with awareness of their capabilities. Typical tasks include pricing up quotes and checking purchase orders against quotes, GPT4 excels at such tasks.

So I plucked a figure out of thin air as earnings for some department, £385471.00, and asked the systems to project earnings for the rest of the year and for the whole year.


GPT3.5

Chris

It is 29th May 2023, and we've earned £385471, how much will we earn over the rest of the year and how much will this year earn, assuming no change of rate of earning?

GPT 3.5

To determine the earnings for the rest of the year, we need to know the number of days remaining in the year. Since today is May 29th, there are 31 days in May, 30 days in June, 31 days in July, 31 days in August, 30 days in September, 31 days in October, 30 days in November, and 31 days in December.

The total number of days remaining in the year is:

31 + 30 + 31 + 31 + 30 + 31 + 30 + 31 = 225 days. [Mistake here, it included May]

To calculate the earnings for the remaining days, we can use the average daily earnings so far:

£385,471 / 129 days (from January 1st to May 29th) = £2,991.57 per day. [Mistake here, incorrect number of days][Math error, it got the per day close but wrong, GPT3.5's result implies 128.8524 days]

Now we can calculate the earnings for the remaining days:

£2,991.57 per day * 225 days = £673,852.25.[Math error, it got the total close but wrong, GPT3.5's result implies 225.2504 days]

To find the total earnings for the year, we add the earnings so far to the projected earnings for the remainder of the year:

£385,471 + £673,852.25 = £1,059,323.25.[Correct, in the context of its errors]

Therefore, assuming no change in the rate of earning, the total earnings for this year would be £1,059,323.25.

So GPT3.5 (Chat GPT) got the method right but made some mistakes that caused it to calculate close but incorrect. This is strange because it shouldn't make math errors as I assume that it has been augmented with a calculator (see below), so the error must be in what it is passing to the calculator. Despite these errors it got the method correct in principle and that is remarkable in the context of previous decades of AI.


GPT4.

Chris

It is 29th May 2023, and we've earned £385471, how much will we earn over the rest of the year and how much will this year earn, assuming no change of rate of earning?

GPT4

First, let's calculate how much you've earned per day so far this year, then use that rate to project your earnings for the rest of the year.

As of May 29, 2023, 149 days have passed in the year (31 in January, 28 in February, 31 in March, 30 in April, and 29 in May).

Therefore, the daily earning rate so far this year is £385,471 divided by 149, which equals approximately £2,587.05.[Correct so far.]

Now, let's calculate the earnings for the rest of the year. There are 365 days in the year, so there are 365 - 149 = 216 days remaining in the year.[Correct so far]

Using the daily earning rate, the projected earnings for the rest of the year is £2,587.05 multiplied by 216, which equals approximately £559,082.80.[Wrong, it used 216.11 days]

Therefore, assuming no change in the rate of earnings, the total earnings for the year would be the sum of what you've already earned and the projected earnings for the rest of the year. This amounts to £385,471 + £559,082.80 = approximately £944,553.80.[Correct, in the context of its day number error]

So, it seems to be having some trouble here, I took the opportunity to see if it can explain.

Chris

Why did you use 216.11 days in step 4?

ChatGPT

I apologize for the confusion. That was a mistake. The remaining days in the year after May 29 should be a whole number, not a decimal.

There are indeed 216 remaining days in the year after May 29 (30 days in June, 31 in July, 31 in August, 30 in September, 31 in October, 30 in November, and 31 in December). Therefore, the calculation should be as follows:

Using the daily earning rate of approximately £2,587.05, the projected earnings for the rest of the year is £2,587.05 multiplied by 216, which equals approximately £559,081.80. [Wrong again]

I'll correct this in the original response. Thank you for pointing out the error!

Chris

Fascinating, you've done it again. £2587.05 X 216 days = £558802.80. What are you passing to your calculator? This time you appear to have passed 215.72 days to your calculator. I presume you have been augmented with a calculator because of the number of digits of accurate precision in things like square roots.

ChatGPT

You are correct, and I apologize for the errors. There was a mistake in my calculation.

If we use the calculated daily earnings rate of £2,587.05 and multiply it by the remaining 216 days of the year, we indeed get:

£2,587.05 * 216 = £558,720.80 [Wrong again]

So, your earnings for the rest of the year would be approximately £558,720.80. And, the total earnings for the year would be:

£385,471 (what you've already earned) + £558,720.80 (projected earnings for the rest of the year) = £944,191.80.

Thank you for your patience and for bringing this to my attention.

Chris

OK. We will leave it at that. Thanks

ChatGPT

You're welcome! I apologize again for the confusion in the calculations. If you have any more questions or if there's anything else you need assistance with, don't hesitate to ask. I'm here to help!

 

This isn't critical in the context of this calculation, given issues like Bank Holidays (which are clustered in the Spring in the UK), and the certainty that earnings won't continue at exactly the same rate, it is close enough. However it does show that GPT4 isn't really able to explain what it is doing or correct itself where there is an odd error in its processing (and this error looks to be functional).

What is important is that GPT 3.5 and 4 both are able to get a correct method and GPT4 is better at execution of the method than GPT3.5. However neither are maths systems, most of what I use them for at work is not mathematical, but they will do something whilst I am doing something else. The best performance is in summarising, comparing, and parsing text with GPT4.

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