If you’ve ever tried to use ChatGPT as a calculator, you’ve almost certainly noticed its dyscalculia: The chatbot is bad at math. And it’s not unique among AI in this regard.

Anthropic’s Claude can’t solve basic word problems. Gemini fails to understand quadratic equations. And Meta’s Llama struggles with straightforward addition.

So how is it that these bots can write soliloquies, yet get tripped up by grade-school-level arithmetic?