Simply put, LLMs are great at forming sentences but can’t do math. Like, any math. If they get 60+21=81 right, it’s only going to be because it’s textually written somewhere in the training data that 60+21=81. However, it’s very unlikely for counting the number of Ts in colonialism to be in there, so it just hallucinates what it thinks is a correct response.
Simply put, LLMs are great at forming sentences but can’t do math. Like, any math. If they get 60+21=81 right, it’s only going to be because it’s textually written somewhere in the training data that 60+21=81. However, it’s very unlikely for counting the number of Ts in colonialism to be in there, so it just hallucinates what it thinks is a correct response.