Yes Google, 2/3 is TOTALLY the same as 1/2

Not even moderately helpful for printer questions.

What, your printer doesn't have a full keyboard under its battery? You've gotta get with the times my man.
It sounds like some weird ritual that someone scratched into a notebook.

𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿?? ｕｎｄｅｒｂａｔｔｅｒｙ, m͟u͟s͟t͟ f͟i͟n͟d͟ k͟e͟y͟s͟
- Most desk side support is exactly that.
- Wait did you edit this image? That's some effort you've put in.
80 year old grandmas trying to find the Ctrl and Alt buttons on her printer...
- Did she look under the battery?

Google's AI seems dumber than the rest, for example here's Kagi answering the same (using Claude):

edit: typoed question originally

Perhaps Google's tried to make it run too cheaply - Kagi's one doesn't run unless you ask for it, and as a paid product it'll have different priorities.

There are two meanings being conflated here.

"1/3 more" can mean "+ 1/3" or "* (1 + 1/3)“.

So "1/3 more than 1/3" could be 2/3 or 4/9, but not 1/2.

Instead 1/2 is 1/2 more than 1/3, not 1/3 more. That's the meme I've seen go around recently.
- ~~Yes, and the Google AI response is correct (and quite clear) in what it says.~~ edit: Thanks Batman. I mean that Google's understanding of the question is logical (although still the maths is wrong as you say (now I've re-read you)) and its answer explained the angle it was answering from.
  
  However, I think the reasonable assumption for the intention behind the question is relative to a whole. I had third of a pizza, and now I have an extra sixth of a pizza. It's subtle, but that's the kind of thing AI falls down on.
Kagi has Claude built in? I've been using it for a year and didn't know that.
- It tries to auto-determine when to trigger, but you can explicitly trigger it by putting a question mark after your query.
- This is why Kagi is a great company.
  
  Nobody is getting LLM functionality shoved in their faces unless they wanted to.
this is why i like the DDG approach: don't have the LLM try to reason, just have it pull information from sources you've checked aren't completely insane, and summarize an answer from there.

one third plus one half of one third is one half.

Sure, but, what does that have to do with the AI answer? Wait.. Are you an AI?
I think thats an issue with AI, it has been so much trained on complex questions that now when you ask a simple one, it mistakes it for a complex one and answers it that way
- The issue is it's an LLM. It puts words in an order that's statistically plausible but has no reasoning power.
- It's auto-complete. It knows that "4" is the most common substring to follow "2 + 2" in its training. It's not actually doing addition.
Well no, but it's close enough in a lot of cases

Now ask it if a Third-of-a-Pound burger is bigger than a Quarter Pounder

Did Google train Gemini on American dataset?

LLMs can't math

Ironically the one thing computers are normally good at.
- yea
The math is correct. One third (2/6) + half of one third (1/6) = one half (3/6, aka 1/2).

The Internet is very confidently stupid.
- It didn't mention halving a third.

This is very clearly an example of bad AI, but maybe it was trying (and failing) to convey this?

Basically, 1/3 + 1/9 + 1/27 + 1/81 + ... + 1/3^n = 1/2.

Probably not. But maybe.

I’m thinking it’s trying to say:

(2/6) + (1/6) = (3/6) = (4/6) - (1/6)

But either in “colloquial English for those who want to give other people aneurysms” or “colloquial English for those trying to sound smarter but aren’t”

Basically that the degree of difference between a half and a third is the same degree of difference between a half and two thirds- and that degree of difference is “one part”.
- It's not trying to say either of them.
  
  It's just guessing what word to say next, given the previous words in the context.
Or ⅓ + (⅓*½) = ½
1/3 is 1/2 of 2/3

(1/3) +(1/2)(1/3) = 1/2

Math checks out from this end.

"a half is one-third more than a third" should mean either

1/3 + 1/3 = 1/2

Or

1/3 + (1/3 × 1/3) = 1/2

Neither of which is true.
- I feel like 'a half is one-third more than a third' is ambiguous and same as in 'X is N% more than Y' one may use X or Y as 100%
  
  I'm sure that one interpretation is more common, but I don't think that it is exclusively correct
1/3 more than 1/3 is 4/9. What you wrote is 1/2 more than 1/3, not 1/3 more of it.

LLMs are really fucking bad at math. They're trying to find the statistical close answer, not doing computation. It's rather mind-numbingly dumb.

Unfortunately a shockingly large number of people don’t get this… including my old boss who was running an AI-based startup 💀

"42"

"The answer to life the universe and everything is 42!?"

"Yes, I checked it quite thoroughly."

...

"But what was the actual question?"

Alternatively, garbage in, garbage out.

considering where the garbage came from, maybe we should stop shitposting :)
- That's like having google make a pizza with everything in my fridge then they complain that I also keep the dog's food in there.

Maybe the intent is to make people even dumber. It’s just misinformation all the way down.

Wouldn't even be surprised at this point. It seems the system is intentionally designed to discourage critical thinking and apparently knowing how to do math properly is too close for comfort now.
- Someone I know had an old friend on their Facebook timeline say that schools should be reformed and don’t need classes like algebra. Then they proceeded to list fields kids could receive training for instead… and all of them required math of some sort.

I read it as “A third of a third plus a third is a half.” Which makes sense to me. What an I missing?

It's wrong. 1/3 + (1/3 * 1/3) = 3/9 + 1/9 = 4/9. It's close though.

However, one third plus one half of a third is correct. 1/3 + (1/2 * 1/3) = 1/3 + (1.5/3 * 1/3) = 1/3 + 0.5/3 = 1.5/3 = 1/2
- I'm guessing whatever it scraped to generate this was intended for divvying up food rather than doing actual math. 1/3 plus a third of a third is close enough to a half if you're talking about portioning out pizza or leftovers or what have you.
What an I missing?

basic arithmetic? .33 + .33 doesn't = .5
- Guess that makes two of us. More like .11 + .33 doesn’t = .5

Oh. I just noticed the extraneous word in the search, which might be throwing off the LLM trying to understand it.

I asked ChatGPT these questions and got sensible answers.

How much more is one half than one third?

[subtraction answer: 1/6 more]

That's one possibility, but what about the other way to interpret that question?

[ratio answer, but expressed as "1.5 times as much" rather than "1/2 more"]

Divide 50% by 3 and get 16.666666....

Add that to the 50%, you gets 66.6666...%

Which is the same as dividing a whole into 3 and adding two together.

It's trying to get there, but it seems to think you're talking about starting with 50% and increasing that by 1/3 of the existing half.

It interpreted what you typed as something like:

X=50

Y=x/3

Solve for:

X+Y

And gave you 66.666...%

But you could also just get a calculator and type 50 - 33.33333

I don't know why anyone would Google this question in a search engine, AI is dumb enough without trying to phrase things in a way that you think it says something stupid.

Like, did you legitimately Google it that way in an attempt find out the difference between half and a third?

It’s trying to get there, but it seems to think you’re talking about starting with 50% and increasing that by 1/3 of the existing half.

Yeah, it's definitely trying something. But it's also showing the problems with LLM.

Like, did you legitimately Google it that way in an attempt find out the difference between half and a third?

I remember being able to put basic math problems into Google and it spit out the correct answer. But you're right, that's entirely on me for expecting Google to work right after all the enshitification. For the record, Wolfram Alpha gave the correct answer.
- I remember being able to put basic math problems into Google and it spit out the correct answer
  
  Pretty sure you can still do that if you don't type it out as weird as possible...
  
  But I haven't tried to Google something in over a year.
  
  Have fun tho I guess.
- LLMs predict statistical likelihoods of words coming next. Them not being able to do math, unless explicitly given extra instructions to identify and do those problems, has been reported before, IIRC.

It is correct. Half is 3/6 a third is 2/6. So a half is one third larger than 1/3

You dropped this: /s