Does AI only use language models?

I was thinking for math. My father was in his 20s in the 70s. And although accepted to Princeton he did not go. IQ about 20 points higher than mine. And trained himself on things he wanted to know reading magazines and reading books on things to solve problems. Like the hubble telescope. Taught himself optics to figure out how to use what was functional. Not sure what they actually did, I guess sent someone up and fixed it. Or same thing he did. I don't know

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We looked at one of those problems on the Internet where it shows 8/2(2+2). Seeing it as compsci and calculator user as 8/2*2. I said ( we went to the same school decades apart) it was 8/2x. Number theory thinking.

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I am worried that compsci guys don't know that when building these programs when so much could depend on it. Does it differentiate hand written math vs calculator math?