It's true though, they can't. It really depends on what they have to work with.
In the fixed world of mathematics, everything could in principle be great. In software, it can in principle be okay even though contexts might be longer. When dealing with new contexts in something like real life, but different-- such as a story where nobody can communicate with the main characters because they speak a different language, then the models simply can't deal with it, always returning to the context they're familiar with.
When you give them contexts that are different enough from the kind of texts they've seen, they do indeed fail to follow basic instructions, even though they can follow seemingly much more difficult instructions in other contexts.
In the fixed world of mathematics, everything could in principle be great. In software, it can in principle be okay even though contexts might be longer. When dealing with new contexts in something like real life, but different-- such as a story where nobody can communicate with the main characters because they speak a different language, then the models simply can't deal with it, always returning to the context they're familiar with.
When you give them contexts that are different enough from the kind of texts they've seen, they do indeed fail to follow basic instructions, even though they can follow seemingly much more difficult instructions in other contexts.