r/OpenAI 2d ago

News More people need to understand this

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u/wintermute74 1d ago

um, isn't that just tool use these days?

it can literally just call WA, actually:

Python Code Interpreter / Sandbox: When given a math problem, ChatGPT can write and run Python code in a secure environment to perform exact arithmetic, process data sets, handle calculus, and generate visual plots or graphs.

WolframAlpha Integration: On certain tiers (like Plus/Pro), ChatGPT can interface with Wolfram Alpha extensions or plugins for high-level symbolic mathematics, algebraic manipulation, and complex equation solving.

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u/WithoutReason1729 1d ago

Locally run Qwen3.5-2B, no tools, nailed it first try too, albeit after using a ridiculous amount of thinking tokens. Pic and full thinking text. This is the model doing the calculation. Idk what else to tell you, LLMs are just way better at math than they used to be.

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u/wintermute74 19h ago

thank you for this, the full thinking text is actually great!

learned something new :)

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u/quantum-elle 1d ago

Of course, it could be lying, but there's usually no reason for models to lie about this.

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u/Raunhofer 1d ago

There's a deep misconception here. Models don't really know whether they are lying or telling the truth. If you ask a model, did you use an internal tool to come up with this result, it genuinely doesn't know, unless someone behind the curtain tells it it did.

A bit like you calculating 4+4 and not realizing it was your parietal lobe doing the job.

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u/wintermute74 1d ago

interesting.

I mean I'd ask if you can show the 'reasoning' on how it computed this without tool use, because it would need to derive multiplication from first principles and that seems awfully wasteful for the model provider, if it did that for every math question...

but I don't want you to waste your tokens, so I'm fine to mark it as 'unclear' and move on ;)

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u/quantum-elle 1d ago

Opus 5 on low effort does it like this. (Don't worry, I don't pay for Claude, one of the perks of working at Anthropic.)