That’s not really right, because verifying solutions is usually much easier than finding them. A calculator that can take in arbitrary sets of formulas and produce answers for variables, but is sometimes wrong, is an entirely different beast than a calculator that can plug values into variables and evaluate expressions to check if they’re correct.
As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that argument would also make quantum computing pointless - because quantum computers are probability based and can provide answers for difficult problems, but not consistently, so you want to use a regular computer to verify those answers.
Perhaps a better comparison would be a dictionary that can explain entire sentences, but requires you to then check each word in a regular dictionary and make sure it didn’t mix them up completely? Though I guess that’s actually exactly how LLMs operate…
Except when you’re doing calculations, a calculator can run through an equation substituting the given answers and see that the values match… Which is my point of calculators not being a good example. And the case of a quantum computer wasn’t addressed.
I agree that LLMs have many issues, are being used for bad purposes, are overhyped, and we’ve yet to see if the issues are solvable - but I think the analogy is twisting the truth, and I think the current state of LLMs being bad is not a license to make disingenuous comparisons.