Well, it failed the common-sense test today.

I have an older, standalone system in my shop that has the habit of resetting its internal clock very time there's a flicker in the power supply. I don't get around to resetting it very often.

This morning, I wanted to check on an event from yesterday afternoon. Soon I'm asking Perplexity Pro:

"The clock is incorrect, saying it is 11:14 pm on Jan 10 2005 when the correct time is 9:15 am on Aug 30 2024.

What time did the incorrect clock show on Aug 30 2024 at 2:36 PM?"

It thought for maybe ten seconds.

"To determine what time the incorrect clock showed on August 30, 2024, at 2:36 PM, we need to account for the time difference between the incorrect clock's initial setting and the correct time. The incorrect clock was set to 11:14 PM on January 10, 2005, while the correct time was 9:15 AM on August 30, 2024. The time difference between these two times is 172,115 hours
. To find what the incorrect clock showed at 2:36 PM on August 30, 2024, we add this time difference to the correct time:

Correct time on August 30, 2024, at 2:36 PM
Add 172,115 hours

This calculation results in the incorrect clock showing 1:36 AM on April 19, 2044." (bolding original)

So, Perplexity:

- interpreted the question correctly, and
- applied the right correction, but
- in the wrong direction (See: reciprocal bearing, where one sails confidently directly towards the reef)

A bright fifth grader could have done this, but she would also know to apply a common-sense filter to the proposed answer before reporting it out.

-- sutton
(who knows he could have looked up the correct function in, say, Excel, and had the answer in a few minutes.
...instead, he's electing the pragmatic solution <especially after the week this market's had>: amazon.com - Ref=ox sc act image )