If it is bad at math and can’t be taught, then you have a fundamental problem. It’s a matter of time before this limit gets hit in other domains.
Through continuous use, I have found that it does not "reason". That doesn't mean it's not valuable in many ways, and I have found it to be very helpful in a multitude of diverse applications, including helping me reflect on my own life through my own interpretations of its output. It's also a great interface for JSTOR, wikipedia, and basically any language learning.
I'm having a hard time making the jump from "this must be a calculator" to "this must be a philosopher" to be useful. When did we ever have those requirements for a tool?
This tool is just not made for math. Most of its logic processing abilities seem to surpass mine if I am only given 5 minutes to understand a problem. If you understand the tool, you will get the most out of it. Stop anthropomorphizing it, and stop pretending that it can't generate both highly beneficial or highly harmful content simply because it doesn't have a soul/d*ck or whatever.
Or it is just pretending to do so. And since it pretends, of course it trips over all small things as it does not understand them.
And in this case, the shape of the answer is often right; it just makes ... ordinary errors. Ironically, the AI is a lot better at high-level thinking than correct calculation.
That would be actually a human like feature .. except I do not consider what LLMs are doing as thinking.
100,000 + 987 - 1444 * 25,945.842 / 0.0042
becomes
"100" one hundred
"," comma
"000" triple zero
" +" space plus
" 9" space nine
"87" eighty seven
" -" space minus
" 14" space 14
"44" forty four
" *" space times
" 25" space twenty five
"," comma
"9" nine
"45" forty five
"." period
"8" eight
"42" forty two
" /" space divide
" 0" zero
"." period
"00" double zero
"42" forty two
Now imagine someone reading that to you over the phone once and asking you to do the math in your head and you aren't allowed to use paper and pencil and you have to get it right the first time.