Constant Elasticity of Substitution (non-special cases) I am trying to better understand the CES function:

$$Y_{t}=C\left[\pi\left(A_{t}^{K} K_{t}\right)^{\frac{\sigma-1}{\sigma}}+(1-\pi)\left(A_{t}^{L} L_{t}\right)^{\frac{\sigma-1}{\sigma}}\right]^{\frac{\sigma}{\sigma-1}}$$

I understand the special cases where $\sigma=1$, where $\sigma=0$ and where $\sigma\rightarrow0$.

I am, for some reason, having a really hard time developing intuition for other cases. Don't the exponents cancel for all other values of $\sigma$ and the expression reduces to:

$$Y_{t}=C(\pi(A_{t}^{K} K_{t}) +(1-\pi)(A_{t}^{L} L_{t}))$$

This, of course, can't be right as $Y_t$ should vary for different values of $\sigma$, no?
The exponents do not cancel each other out. E.g.,
$$
(a^2+b^2)^{1/2} \neq a + b 
$$
because
$$
(a^2+b^2)^{1/2} \neq (a^2 + 2ab + b^2)^{1/2}.
$$