Usually, negative means “less than 0”, and a comparison is only available for real numbers and not complex numbers, so negative numbers mean negative real numbers.
That said, ChatGPT is actually correct to use “Normally” in “Normally, when you multiply two negative numbers, you get a positive number.” because taking the product of two negative floating point numbers can give zero if the numbers are too tiny. Concretely in python -1e300 * -1e300 gives an exact zero, and this holds in all programming languages that follow the IEEE 754 standard.
I disagree with the last paragraph and think that “Normally” is misleading as stated in the OP; I think it’s clear when talking about numbers in a general sense that issues with representations of numbers as used in computers aren’t included except as a side curiosity or if there’s a cue to the effect that that’s what’s being discussed.
Usually, negative means “less than 0”, and a comparison is only available for real numbers and not complex numbers, so negative numbers mean negative real numbers.
That said, ChatGPT is actually correct to use “Normally” in “Normally, when you multiply two negative numbers, you get a positive number.” because taking the product of two negative floating point numbers can give zero if the numbers are too tiny. Concretely in python
-1e300 * -1e300gives an exact zero, and this holds in all programming languages that follow the IEEE 754 standard.I disagree with the last paragraph and think that “Normally” is misleading as stated in the OP; I think it’s clear when talking about numbers in a general sense that issues with representations of numbers as used in computers aren’t included except as a side curiosity or if there’s a cue to the effect that that’s what’s being discussed.