> These behaviors are surprising. It seems that despite being incredibly powerful at solving math and coding tasks, o3 is not by default truthful about its capabilities.
It is only surprising to those who refuse to understand how LLMs work and continue to anthropomorphise them. There is no being “truthful” here, the model has no concept of right or wrong, true or false. It’s not “lying” to you, it’s spitting out text. It just so happens that sometimes that non-deterministic text aligns with reality, but you don’t really know when and neither does the model.
It is only surprising to those who refuse to understand how LLMs work and continue to anthropomorphise them. There is no being “truthful” here, the model has no concept of right or wrong, true or false. It’s not “lying” to you, it’s spitting out text. It just so happens that sometimes that non-deterministic text aligns with reality, but you don’t really know when and neither does the model.