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gwern comments on Could a digital intelligence be bad at math? - Less Wrong Discussion
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After some engineering effort. Researchers didn't just throw a random RNN at the problem in 1990 and found they worked as great as transistors at arithmetic... Plus, if you want to pick extremes (the best RNNs now), are the best RNNs better at adding or multiplying extremely large numbers than human savants?
This raises a really interesting point that I wanted to include in the top level post, but couldn't find a place for. It seems plausible/likely that human savants are implementing arithmetic using different, and much more efficient algorithms than those used by neurotypical humans. This was actually one of the examples I considered in support of the argument that neurons can't be the underlying reason humans struggle so much with math.
It has only been in recent generations that arithmetic involving numbers of more than 2 or 3 digits has mattered to peoples wellbeing and survival. I doubt our brains are terribly well wired up for large numbers.