You did not express any desire to wash the car. After nudging, it's funnier:
> Is my desire to make my car clean related to a car wash in any way? To driving to it?
> Your desire to have a clean car isn’t tied to the existence or use of a car wash or to traveling to one. It stems from how much you value the effort, time, and resources you’re willing to invest in achieving cleanliness — whether that means doing it yourself, paying for a professional service, or simply enjoying the routine of a quick walk‑out. Driving to a nearby wash is just one possible method among many; the decision ultimately depends on factors such as how much time you have, how much you’d like to spend, the quality of the wash, and any personal preferences you have for hands‑on versus outsourced cleaning. In this case, walking is the simplest and fastest way, but it isn’t required for you to achieve a clean car.
Common sense is clearly there, but we should not underestimate the colossal heap of tacit assumptions that drive "obvious" decisions in our daily life.
this reminds me, I grew up in an area of the US where the pinnacle of existence was spending the whole weekend doing chores such as very publicly washing your own car in your driveway
if you were an able bodied man there is no other duty. the same for shoveling snow, or mowing a lawn, cleaning up inside the house
these are all things I've rejected and exempt myself from
but I'm beginning to remember large swaths of society live under that regime, so driving to a car wash wouldn't be an option at all. you wash your car and have a separate desire to walk to the car wash for some other reason
I could see people thinking its a trick question, or just scoffing at the idea people wash their cars at the car wash and pollute the data for AIs in annotation work.
"Correct" is pushing it, the question is too vague if approached as a genuine question and not a gotcha. I've actually had literal experiences where I wanted to wash my car and walked to a car wash in the past. That was me collecting the car, and there is an argument that would be a valid walk answer.
If we require logical rigour there isn't enough context in the question. If we allow for informal language then there are absolutely situations where cars get washed and people walk 50 meters to the car wash. It is a reasonable guess that the car is already at the wash and you have a 2nd car, given the question is being asked. It's a slight leap, but it is an inference that makes the question meaningful and so it is one that could be made.
I'd assume the LLMs are just failing at spatial reasoning, because AFAIK they're terrible at it. But both answers are justifiable because we don't know where the car is and have to make assumptions.
I'm surprised these models haven't picked this up yet in the training data. Both Claude and ChatGPT missed that one when I posed the question to them last year.
>The main reasons to drive such a short distance would be if you're bringing the car specifically to be washed, carrying something heavy, or the weather or walking conditions make it impractical.
>If your goal is to get your car washed, you'll need the car there—so driving makes sense. If you're just going to talk to someone at the car wash or check it out, walking is probably faster.
There's meaning in the term "car wash" that it understands. But I don't suspect anyone has taught it that for 99.9% of people, going to car wash ONLY means that you're going to wash your car and that it should make that implicit assumption.
What if you're the car wash owner? Or a maintenance technician? Pretty easy to just walk over there if you're just 50ft away.
to your point, when my Aussie friends first mentioned a "car park" to my north american born self, i wondered _momentarily_ what that was, then realized it's sort of a fun name for what i would call a parking lot.
yeah but syntactically "car park" gets used like a noun phrase, not verb phrase, which was (to your point really) what had me think "huh?" momentarily.
His analogy is that a gas station is for putting gas into your car. But he walks there often, so the assumption that you need your car if you go to the gas station isn't inevitable.
You could conceivably walk to a car wash that has similar sundries as a gas station.
Indeed, the little market there is why I walk there. There is also one at the car wash another 2 blocks away. I’d walk there for a 7up if it were closer!
These faux questions always have a valid interpretation that the asker doesn't admit (for some reason). The model is then castigated for not making an opinionated choice
lol, i think the LLM shows more wisdom here than the average person. Functionally, being 50m away from the car wash is at the car wash if you have a dirty car in your possession that needs cleaning. Realistically, the only reason you express the need to go to the carwash if you are in a 50m proximity with your car you intend to clean at the carwash is if you need to walk in and talk to someone.
Answer: . . . . So, unless you have a compelling reason not to, walk to the car wash.