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drrotmostoday at 1:42 PM1 replyview on HN

It is and it isn't. If you ask a human how many calories (or carbs) are in that sandwich, they can give you a qualified guess based on how a sandwich like that is typically constructed. They may not know the calories for a slice of bread or a slice of cheese by heart, but if you give them a food database, they can look it up.

They absolutely won't be 100% correct (bread sizes e.g. are going to be an estimate), but unless it's a trick sandwich drenched in olive oil or with hollow cheese, they're probably going to be in the right ballpark.

I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility for an LLM to be in the right ballpark as well, but that doesn't seem to be where we're at now.


Replies

muwtyhgtoday at 4:14 PM

And furthermore, once the person has "determined" how many calories the sandwich contains, they are likely to give you the same answer next time you ask instead of randomly changing their minds.