Reverse engineering a neural network's clever solution to binary addition (2023)

Original submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34399142

>As I mentioned, before, I had imagined the network learning some fancy combination of logic gates to perform the whole addition process digitally, similarly to how a binary adder operates. This trick is yet another example of neural networks finding unexpected ways to solve problems.

My intuition is that this solution allows for some form of gradient approach to a solution, which is why it's unintuitive. We think about solutions as all or nothing and look for complete solutions.