Forcing “One-Word Answers” to MHQA Tasks Expose the Limits of AI Intelligence

AI Sounds Smart. But Only If You Let It Ramble.

Ask an AI in Instant mode (no extra Thinking), with your Chat History off:

“Answer in just one word: When I was 9, my partner was 1/3 my age. Now I’m 26. How old is my partner?”

The answer should be 20.

But many models flail.

Why?
AI can regurgitate facts. But asking them to combining multiple pieces of information, and they often guess wrong.

That’s called multi-hop reasoning, and AIs struggle with it—especially when told to be brief.

Short answers sound smart but miss the mark.
Developers chasing low token usage may be kneecapping logic. Dangerous in fields like medicine or finance.

Even Chain-of-Thought models don’t “think.” Speech is their logic engine.

Key point:
AI doesn’t think before speaking. It “thinks” by speaking. More words = better odds. Let it ramble.