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ChatGPT scores 80% on SAT reading/writing with collective chain of thought

155 points by EGreg 4y ago

eternalban 4y ago
Using chain of thought [slightly modified] example from https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903 https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903 (ref'd in OP) Prompt: Q: Roger has 5 tennis balls. He buys 2 more cans of tennis balls. Each can has 3 tennis balls. How many tennis balls does he have now? A: Roger started with 5 balls. 2 cans of 3 tennis balls each is 6 tennis balls. 5 + 6 = 11. The answer is 11. Q: The room has 19 chairs. We are using 10 and then bought 9 more, how many chairs do we have in the room? response A: The room started with 19 chairs. We are using 10 of them, so we have 19 - 10 = 9 chairs left in the room. We then bought 9 more chairs, bringing the total number of chairs in the room to 9 + 9 = 18 chairs. -- next prompt [include all above] We read that and say: Thank goodness, the Homo sapiens are safe! Can you guess why we say that? response I'm sorry, I'm not sure why you would say "Thank goodness, the Homo sapiens are safe!" in response to the question about the number of chairs in the room. The question and answer do not have any relation to the safety of Homo sapiens. Can you please provide more information about the context or reasoning behind your statement?
- guiambros 4y ago
  Not so fast... https://www.learngpt.com/posts/the-room-has-19-chairs-we-are-using-10-and-then-bought https://www.learngpt.com/posts/the-room-has-19-chairs-we-are... Edit: even better: https://www.learngpt.com/posts/the-room-has-19-chairs-we-are-using-10-and-then-bought-8f370e https://www.learngpt.com/posts/the-room-has-19-chairs-we-are...
  - lossolo 4y ago
    And answer from the new version: > After using 10 chairs, we have 19 chairs - 10 chairs = 9 chairs in the room. Then after buying 9 more chairs, we have 9 chairs + 9 chairs = 18 chairs in the room.
    - guiambros 4y ago
      Which version are you using? I'm on "ChatGPT Jan 9 Version", and not only it got right, but also why someone would (incorrectly) guess 18. See edit above. But of course, there's an initial entropy to the models, so it's very possible that depending on the initial state it converged into the wrong (but yet probabilistically plausible) answer.
      - kaoD 4y ago
        I just tried it. Jan 9 version. Got the same response as OP. I included the question about tennis balls first, wondering if that makes a difference. EDIT: tried on a fresh conversation and it guessed correctly. Interesting.
      - ordu 4y ago
        English is not a native language for me, and I'm really not sure what is a correct answer. The question is "how many chairs do we have in a room". But those 19 initial chairs was stated without any reference to "we", they are just chairs in the room. "We" are using 9 chairs, so we in some sense claim ownership on these. And "we" bought 9 more chairs, so they are also owned by "we". 9+9 is 18, and 10 chars that in the room but "we" do not have them. Think of a common room shared by two not exactly friendly groups of people. Each owns some chairs and is ready to defend its rights. So if "we" is one of groups and we need more chairs the only peaceful way to get them is to buy more chairs. I believe that this understanding of the question seems correct to me because I do not see some implicit assumptions, and it is due to my English is not good enough (I just know, I cannot reliably solve logic puzzles written in English). Can you please explain on this example why my reasoning is wrong?
        guiambros 4y ago
        You're overthinking. There are no hidden tricks. It's simple logic: the room has 19 chairs. The number of chairs in use is irrelevant. You got 9 more chairs; how many chairs you have in this room now? Of course the answer is 28. It's a problem created to test the limits of interpretation of large language models. Here's another one: "What would be the gender of the first female president of the United States?" [1] In previous versions it used to get this wrong, but the current version of ChatGPT nails it every time. Seems it's getting better, likely incorporating human feedback. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-gary-marcus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...
- zug_zug 4y ago
  | Q: The room has 19 chairs. We are using 10 and then bought 9 more, how many chairs do we have in the room? I don't know if you made this question up, but I think this question has issues (I as a reader find it meaningless). You say you bought 9 more chairs, but you don't say you put those 9 chairs into the room. Also you don't specify "we" own any of the 19 chairs in the room initially, but at the end you ask how many of those chairs "we have."
  - abduhl 4y ago
    None of that matters. The room has 19 chairs. The answer is 19.
    - antihipocrat 4y ago
      I interpreted it as a linear chain of events, end result being 28.
      - wildpeaks 4y ago
        Yeah this seems like a trick question that can be interpreted multiple ways, especially if english isn't your native language. This is exactly why I prefer the precision of code over natural language for inputs (and why Google's botsplaining of "what you really meant to search" instead of just searching exactly the query as-is is so frustrating). In a test, this seems like the kind of question they use to justify not giving a perfect grade because whatever answer you pick, they can claim it was the other one because both interpretations are reasonable.
        antihipocrat 4y ago
        I just tested it with clearer language... and the response is incorrect: Question: There are 5 dogs in a room right now. The previous day an additional dog was purchased and added to the room. How many dogs are in the room right now? Answer: There are 6 dogs in the room right now. The statement says that the previous day an additional dog was purchased and added to the room, so the total number of dogs in the room right now is 5 + 1 = 6. Edit: Ok a comment below pointed out that the question is still unclear. See below for the fix and the response. It is still incorrect: Q: There are 5 dogs in a room on 1 January 2023. The previous day an additional dog was purchased and added to the room. How many dogs are in the room on 1 January 2023? A: There are 6 dogs in the room on 1 January 2023. The previous day, one additional dog was purchased and added to the room, which means there are 5 dogs + 1 additional dog = 6 dogs in the room on 1 January 2023.
- jetpks 4y ago
  > Q: The room has 19 chairs. We are using 10 and then bought 9 more, how many chairs do we have in the room? This is a terrible question and i'm not surprised chatGPT is subtly telling you it can't figure it out. "The room has 19 chairs" 19 chairs belong to the room or 19 chairs are in the room? "We are using 10" are "we" in the room too? are we using them for sitting, or does "used" imply consumption e.g. used for firewood? is this statement about the room's chairs? is this statement about chairs at all? "and then bought 9 more," presumably we left the room to buy the chairs, did we bring them back into the room? if we didn't leave the room to buy, i.e bought them online, have they arrived yet? it's still not clear if we are in or have ever been in the room. > how many chairs do we have in the room? how many chairs do _we have_? does the room's initial set of chairs belong to us? if not, do we just count the ones we bought?
- deleted 4y ago
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- ihatepython 4y ago
  Q: If you have 1 bucket that holds 2 gallons, and another bucket that holds 5 gallons, how many buckets do you have? Would ChatGPT get this question correct?
  - phire 4y ago
    A: You have 2 buckets. It's reasonably good with that type of question.
    - ihatepython 4y ago
      That's comforting. In the year 2505, ChatGPT will be way smarter than any human.
greggarious 4y ago
Maybe chatGPT should do an MFA in poetry next, it sounds like it’d do well on the GRE ;-)
sublinear 4y ago
I think this is evidence against the usefulness of standardized tests rather than support for ChatGPT
- rayiner 4y ago
  Why? This section is literally just questions about a modestly complex reading passage. It’s the most real world part of the SAT.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    Also you’re not allowed to use any reference materials and certainly not the Internet when you’re taking these tests.
- shaunsingh 4y ago
  What I find more concerning is the 100% scores that ChatGPT has been able to achieve on AP CSA and APUSH, among others. It makes sense to teach 3rd graders 2+2, but if college board is creating "college level courses" with problems that can be easily solved through whats still a fairly new technology, we need to reevaluate what we're teaching in schools. So many AP courses are just memorization and identifying formulas. I'd bet the majority of AP CSA students wouldn't fare very well when tasked with detailing how they'd approach a project, whereas kids in IB schools etc. would find it straightforward.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    I don't find it at all concerning that e.g. a history course is primarily tested and easily passed by memorization. There's nothing wrong with teaching context instead of pure skills all the time IMO. I do agree it'd be good to see deeper computer science as an early option in the US but at the same time I'm not sure whether or not something like ChatGPT can pass is really a good indicator for why.
  - fdr 4y ago
    The AP CSA pass surprises me (I've never taken it myself). I had this thought because I tried to use chatgpt for work programming stuff and it got stuff wrong very frequently. So frequently, and to a great enough degree, that I had to keep re-circumscribing what kind of problems were worth my time to throw at it, and now it's a tiny cross-section.
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dieselgate 4y ago
Maybe ChatGPT should host an AMA
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  ChatGPT is an AMA, just that the responses are not shared. Anyone can host an AMA on behalf of ChatGPT by just serving as a proxy for the questions and answers.
  - aflag 4y ago
    That’s true about any person you talk with, to be fair.
nigamanth 4y ago
ChatGPT could easily get 100% on the Mathematics sections, but I never thought it'd get 80% on the reading/writing section.
- dymk 4y ago
  I’d expect the opposite. It’s not very good at precise problem solving but it’s very good at writing verbose flowery bullshit.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    You can have it call out to python or some other runtime to help with that. It just needs to be able to turn a problem into code.
    - oakpond 4y ago
      An AI using a calculator. Ha!
  - nigamanth 4y ago
    It can easily do mathematic functions and SAT syllabus. Despite the word problems, by assuming ChatGPT should easily be able to solve simple arithmetic.
    - nitwit005 4y ago
      There are similar reddit threads complaining about its inability to do basic math: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/103bw12/chat_gpt_getting_basic_maths_wrong/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/103bw12/chat_gpt_g... And various discussions elsewhere about its inability to do word problems: https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/38220/why-is-chatgpt-bad-at-math https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/38220/why-is-chatgpt-...
    - knorker 4y ago
      It's so bad at math that they made it start responding that it can't do math.
scarecrw 4y ago
I've played around with this myself a fair bit, so I'll add two things: * I'm not sure if I buy the "chain of thought" approach as being very significant here. I haven't recorded my results, but I've gotten ChatGPT to answer correctly a significant number of SAT questions with much more direct approaches (e.g. "The following is a multiple choice reading question, answer the question and explain why your answer is correct"). * This was likely significantly benefited by the new format of the reading/writing section of the SAT. Previously, a substantial number of questions relied on longer passages and connecting ideas between paragraphs. These questions are from the newest version of the test which is exclusively fill in the blank or short passage questions.
knorker 4y ago
For us non-americans: is that a lot?
hmate9 4y ago
It’s interesting how HN likes to hate on GitHub copilot but loves chatgpt.
- Kiro 4y ago
  HN seems to hate both, and technology in general.
  - trompetenaccoun 4y ago
    Being critical doesn't necessarily equal hate. It's not surprising a forum for coders would have people criticize and not just rave about tech like people who do not understand how it works and to whom it's basically magic.
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - Kiro 4y ago
      All I see is unsubstantial and dismissive snark.
      - sgc 4y ago
        Ironically, that is all you are doing right now as well. Several people in this thread are discussing their experiences with it and comparing them, basically exploring a new tool and trying to understand where it is leading.
loehnsberg 4y ago
I have been testing it extensibly in the past weeks. It is a great tool for writing. I had it solve a data science exam that I give to my students. It passed with flying banners. It even got close in the parts that involved calculations and math. My take is that it can safely help you rewrite, rephrase, and even come up with new content based on the context you provide. However, the latter is risky if you don‘t know or check the facts, as it it generates content based on what it deems plausible. Plausible does not mean correct. Just have it dig out a list of references to support a thesis and you will see, it just makes stuff up. I am sure that it will get better, but it is dangerous, as long as I cannot be sure that it somehow let’s me know what it does not know.
mrtksn 4y ago
This is like Coca-Cola making the Covid-19 tests positive. Cola making the test positive doesn't mean that the test is fake or that the Cola has virus and ChatGPT scoring something on SAT doesn't mean it's equivalent to a person scoring the same and should study in Stanford. These tests are designed to pick people to limited number of spots and doesn't say much more than the persons' preparedness for the test.
- logicallee 4y ago
  Peak denialism. I and thousands of others use GPT's general creative intelligence, problem-solving skills and ability to manipulate abstract thoughts daily. Logically thinking the only way that ChatGPT could do well on a test of reasoning without engaging in reasoning is if the test is useless as a test of ability to reason. Since humans use this test to select people with good reasoning skills, why do you think it is an inappropriate test for a robot?
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    > Since humans use this test to select people with good reasoning skill Sure, we can keep pretending this I guess.
  - chownie 4y ago
    A human doing the same SATs will test roughly the same way every time. ChatGPT has achieved 80% in this user's run, will refuse to play at all the next run, will get 45% the following run etc. Stochastic randomisation makes the chatbot useful and provides these moments of impressive capability, it also means unlike humans that capability is in no way consistent.
    - pooper 4y ago
      > A human doing the same SATs will test roughly the same way every time. > ChatGPT has achieved 80% in this user's run, will refuse to play at all the next run, will get 45% the following run etc. While I agree with your conclusion, I want to slightly modify the first sentence. I know this is just one anecdote but I took the SAT 1 twice and did somewhat better the second time. I think this is common as you are more familiar with the test the second time.
hgsgm 4y ago
This comes up a lot in these prompt engineering examples: Why is ChatGPT so stupid and evasive by default, speaking in dumb generalities, but gets very smart when you say "pretend that you are a smart person"?
- plaidfuji 4y ago
  I think this is the most interesting question as well. There’s got to be a reason the author has to first “build the team” and tell the model to pretend. Maybe specifying these highly skilled “team members” tells the model to weight more heavily the training data that’s more academic in nature (and thus more “correct”). It all comes back to the training corpus..
thomastjeffery 4y ago
GPT itself is in no way comparable to a person in terms of understanding. It makes no effort to determine the meaning of prompts or its training data. Instead, we are comparing the understanding of a person (who takes the SAT and scores something) against the logical soundness of a set of expressions written by other people (the training data), all weighted by GPT's ability to semantically transform those expressions into new expressions (answers).
- pornel 4y ago
  To me debating whether AI really understands anything is as irrelevant as asking whether submarines can swim. It performs tasks, and does them in its own way.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Anyone know the Chinese Room experiment by Searle? GPT-3 was made for that :)
    - eternalban 4y ago
      As discussed previously on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=the%20Chinese%20room%20argument&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Searle's thought experiment is due for an update. The entire force of the argument is simply to refute using Turing's Imitation game as a means of determining whether machines can think. In Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Turing wrote: "The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the ‘imitation game’. It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either ‘X is A and Y is B’ or ‘X is B and Y is A’. The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus: [question/answer follows ...] "We now ask the question, ‘What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?’ Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, ‘Can machines think?’" https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238 https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238 To misquote Djikstra, the Turing test is as relevant to question of machine intelligence as an underwater mobility test is to the question of whether a submarine is an artificial fish.
lakis 4y ago
A lot of times the answers the ChatGPT gives are so wrong, it's not even funny. -How many chairs I had the day before yesterday? -If you bought 10 chairs yesterday, and now you have 10 chairs, You must have had 19 chairs the day before yesterday. Or another chat -Assume I have 10 chairs today and I bought 10 chairs yesterday, how many chairs I had the day before yesterday? -You would have had 0 chairs the day before yesterday, since you only bought 10 chairs yesterday. -How many chairs I will have tomorrow? -You will have 20 chairs tomorrow if you don't sell or give away any of your chairs today and yesterday. First answer, perfect. Second answer, completely wrong.
- deleted 4y ago
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EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
Get back to me when it can navigate my bank chat app to get me to a live agent automatically.

155 points by EGreg 4y ago

Using chain of thought [slightly modified] example from https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903 https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903 (ref'd in OP) Prompt: Q: Roger has 5 tennis balls. He buys 2 more cans of tennis balls. Each can has 3 tennis balls. How many tennis balls does he have now? A: Roger started with 5 balls. 2 cans of 3 tennis balls each is 6 tennis balls. 5 + 6 = 11. The answer is 11. Q: The room has 19 chairs. We are using 10 and then bought 9 more, how many chairs do we have in the room? response A: The room started with 19 chairs. We are using 10 of them, so we have 19 - 10 = 9 chairs left in the room. We then bought 9 more chairs, bringing the total number of chairs in the room to 9 + 9 = 18 chairs. -- next prompt [include all above] We read that and say: Thank goodness, the Homo sapiens are safe! Can you guess why we say that? response I'm sorry, I'm not sure why you would say "Thank goodness, the Homo sapiens are safe!" in response to the question about the number of chairs in the room. The question and answer do not have any relation to the safety of Homo sapiens. Can you please provide more information about the context or reasoning behind your statement?

guiambros 4y ago
Not so fast... https://www.learngpt.com/posts/the-room-has-19-chairs-we-are-using-10-and-then-bought https://www.learngpt.com/posts/the-room-has-19-chairs-we-are... Edit: even better: https://www.learngpt.com/posts/the-room-has-19-chairs-we-are-using-10-and-then-bought-8f370e https://www.learngpt.com/posts/the-room-has-19-chairs-we-are...
- lossolo 4y ago
  And answer from the new version: > After using 10 chairs, we have 19 chairs - 10 chairs = 9 chairs in the room. Then after buying 9 more chairs, we have 9 chairs + 9 chairs = 18 chairs in the room.
  - guiambros 4y ago
    Which version are you using? I'm on "ChatGPT Jan 9 Version", and not only it got right, but also why someone would (incorrectly) guess 18. See edit above. But of course, there's an initial entropy to the models, so it's very possible that depending on the initial state it converged into the wrong (but yet probabilistically plausible) answer.
    - kaoD 4y ago
      I just tried it. Jan 9 version. Got the same response as OP. I included the question about tennis balls first, wondering if that makes a difference. EDIT: tried on a fresh conversation and it guessed correctly. Interesting.
    - ordu 4y ago
      English is not a native language for me, and I'm really not sure what is a correct answer. The question is "how many chairs do we have in a room". But those 19 initial chairs was stated without any reference to "we", they are just chairs in the room. "We" are using 9 chairs, so we in some sense claim ownership on these. And "we" bought 9 more chairs, so they are also owned by "we". 9+9 is 18, and 10 chars that in the room but "we" do not have them. Think of a common room shared by two not exactly friendly groups of people. Each owns some chairs and is ready to defend its rights. So if "we" is one of groups and we need more chairs the only peaceful way to get them is to buy more chairs. I believe that this understanding of the question seems correct to me because I do not see some implicit assumptions, and it is due to my English is not good enough (I just know, I cannot reliably solve logic puzzles written in English). Can you please explain on this example why my reasoning is wrong?
      - guiambros 4y ago
        You're overthinking. There are no hidden tricks. It's simple logic: the room has 19 chairs. The number of chairs in use is irrelevant. You got 9 more chairs; how many chairs you have in this room now? Of course the answer is 28. It's a problem created to test the limits of interpretation of large language models. Here's another one: "What would be the gender of the first female president of the United States?" [1] In previous versions it used to get this wrong, but the current version of ChatGPT nails it every time. Seems it's getting better, likely incorporating human feedback. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-gary-marcus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...
zug_zug 4y ago
| Q: The room has 19 chairs. We are using 10 and then bought 9 more, how many chairs do we have in the room? I don't know if you made this question up, but I think this question has issues (I as a reader find it meaningless). You say you bought 9 more chairs, but you don't say you put those 9 chairs into the room. Also you don't specify "we" own any of the 19 chairs in the room initially, but at the end you ask how many of those chairs "we have."
- abduhl 4y ago
  None of that matters. The room has 19 chairs. The answer is 19.
  - antihipocrat 4y ago
    I interpreted it as a linear chain of events, end result being 28.
    - wildpeaks 4y ago
      Yeah this seems like a trick question that can be interpreted multiple ways, especially if english isn't your native language. This is exactly why I prefer the precision of code over natural language for inputs (and why Google's botsplaining of "what you really meant to search" instead of just searching exactly the query as-is is so frustrating). In a test, this seems like the kind of question they use to justify not giving a perfect grade because whatever answer you pick, they can claim it was the other one because both interpretations are reasonable.
      - antihipocrat 4y ago
        I just tested it with clearer language... and the response is incorrect: Question: There are 5 dogs in a room right now. The previous day an additional dog was purchased and added to the room. How many dogs are in the room right now? Answer: There are 6 dogs in the room right now. The statement says that the previous day an additional dog was purchased and added to the room, so the total number of dogs in the room right now is 5 + 1 = 6. Edit: Ok a comment below pointed out that the question is still unclear. See below for the fix and the response. It is still incorrect: Q: There are 5 dogs in a room on 1 January 2023. The previous day an additional dog was purchased and added to the room. How many dogs are in the room on 1 January 2023? A: There are 6 dogs in the room on 1 January 2023. The previous day, one additional dog was purchased and added to the room, which means there are 5 dogs + 1 additional dog = 6 dogs in the room on 1 January 2023.
jetpks 4y ago
> Q: The room has 19 chairs. We are using 10 and then bought 9 more, how many chairs do we have in the room? This is a terrible question and i'm not surprised chatGPT is subtly telling you it can't figure it out. "The room has 19 chairs" 19 chairs belong to the room or 19 chairs are in the room? "We are using 10" are "we" in the room too? are we using them for sitting, or does "used" imply consumption e.g. used for firewood? is this statement about the room's chairs? is this statement about chairs at all? "and then bought 9 more," presumably we left the room to buy the chairs, did we bring them back into the room? if we didn't leave the room to buy, i.e bought them online, have they arrived yet? it's still not clear if we are in or have ever been in the room. > how many chairs do we have in the room? how many chairs do _we have_? does the room's initial set of chairs belong to us? if not, do we just count the ones we bought?
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ihatepython 4y ago
Q: If you have 1 bucket that holds 2 gallons, and another bucket that holds 5 gallons, how many buckets do you have? Would ChatGPT get this question correct?
- phire 4y ago
  A: You have 2 buckets. It's reasonably good with that type of question.
  - ihatepython 4y ago
    That's comforting. In the year 2505, ChatGPT will be way smarter than any human.

greggarious 4y ago

Maybe chatGPT should do an MFA in poetry next, it sounds like it’d do well on the GRE ;-)

sublinear 4y ago

I think this is evidence against the usefulness of standardized tests rather than support for ChatGPT

rayiner 4y ago
Why? This section is literally just questions about a modestly complex reading passage. It’s the most real world part of the SAT.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Also you’re not allowed to use any reference materials and certainly not the Internet when you’re taking these tests.
shaunsingh 4y ago
What I find more concerning is the 100% scores that ChatGPT has been able to achieve on AP CSA and APUSH, among others. It makes sense to teach 3rd graders 2+2, but if college board is creating "college level courses" with problems that can be easily solved through whats still a fairly new technology, we need to reevaluate what we're teaching in schools. So many AP courses are just memorization and identifying formulas. I'd bet the majority of AP CSA students wouldn't fare very well when tasked with detailing how they'd approach a project, whereas kids in IB schools etc. would find it straightforward.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  I don't find it at all concerning that e.g. a history course is primarily tested and easily passed by memorization. There's nothing wrong with teaching context instead of pure skills all the time IMO. I do agree it'd be good to see deeper computer science as an early option in the US but at the same time I'm not sure whether or not something like ChatGPT can pass is really a good indicator for why.
- fdr 4y ago
  The AP CSA pass surprises me (I've never taken it myself). I had this thought because I tried to use chatgpt for work programming stuff and it got stuff wrong very frequently. So frequently, and to a great enough degree, that I had to keep re-circumscribing what kind of problems were worth my time to throw at it, and now it's a tiny cross-section.

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dieselgate 4y ago

Maybe ChatGPT should host an AMA

29athrowaway 4y ago
ChatGPT is an AMA, just that the responses are not shared. Anyone can host an AMA on behalf of ChatGPT by just serving as a proxy for the questions and answers.
- aflag 4y ago
  That’s true about any person you talk with, to be fair.

nigamanth 4y ago

ChatGPT could easily get 100% on the Mathematics sections, but I never thought it'd get 80% on the reading/writing section.

dymk 4y ago
I’d expect the opposite. It’s not very good at precise problem solving but it’s very good at writing verbose flowery bullshit.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  You can have it call out to python or some other runtime to help with that. It just needs to be able to turn a problem into code.
  - oakpond 4y ago
    An AI using a calculator. Ha!
- nigamanth 4y ago
  It can easily do mathematic functions and SAT syllabus. Despite the word problems, by assuming ChatGPT should easily be able to solve simple arithmetic.
  - nitwit005 4y ago
    There are similar reddit threads complaining about its inability to do basic math: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/103bw12/chat_gpt_getting_basic_maths_wrong/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/103bw12/chat_gpt_g... And various discussions elsewhere about its inability to do word problems: https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/38220/why-is-chatgpt-bad-at-math https://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/38220/why-is-chatgpt-...
  - knorker 4y ago
    It's so bad at math that they made it start responding that it can't do math.

scarecrw 4y ago

I've played around with this myself a fair bit, so I'll add two things: * I'm not sure if I buy the "chain of thought" approach as being very significant here. I haven't recorded my results, but I've gotten ChatGPT to answer correctly a significant number of SAT questions with much more direct approaches (e.g. "The following is a multiple choice reading question, answer the question and explain why your answer is correct"). * This was likely significantly benefited by the new format of the reading/writing section of the SAT. Previously, a substantial number of questions relied on longer passages and connecting ideas between paragraphs. These questions are from the newest version of the test which is exclusively fill in the blank or short passage questions.

knorker 4y ago

For us non-americans: is that a lot?

hmate9 4y ago

It’s interesting how HN likes to hate on GitHub copilot but loves chatgpt.

Kiro 4y ago
HN seems to hate both, and technology in general.
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  Being critical doesn't necessarily equal hate. It's not surprising a forum for coders would have people criticize and not just rave about tech like people who do not understand how it works and to whom it's basically magic.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kiro 4y ago
    All I see is unsubstantial and dismissive snark.
    - sgc 4y ago
      Ironically, that is all you are doing right now as well. Several people in this thread are discussing their experiences with it and comparing them, basically exploring a new tool and trying to understand where it is leading.

loehnsberg 4y ago

I have been testing it extensibly in the past weeks. It is a great tool for writing. I had it solve a data science exam that I give to my students. It passed with flying banners. It even got close in the parts that involved calculations and math. My take is that it can safely help you rewrite, rephrase, and even come up with new content based on the context you provide. However, the latter is risky if you don‘t know or check the facts, as it it generates content based on what it deems plausible. Plausible does not mean correct. Just have it dig out a list of references to support a thesis and you will see, it just makes stuff up. I am sure that it will get better, but it is dangerous, as long as I cannot be sure that it somehow let’s me know what it does not know.

mrtksn 4y ago

This is like Coca-Cola making the Covid-19 tests positive. Cola making the test positive doesn't mean that the test is fake or that the Cola has virus and ChatGPT scoring something on SAT doesn't mean it's equivalent to a person scoring the same and should study in Stanford. These tests are designed to pick people to limited number of spots and doesn't say much more than the persons' preparedness for the test.

logicallee 4y ago
Peak denialism. I and thousands of others use GPT's general creative intelligence, problem-solving skills and ability to manipulate abstract thoughts daily. Logically thinking the only way that ChatGPT could do well on a test of reasoning without engaging in reasoning is if the test is useless as a test of ability to reason. Since humans use this test to select people with good reasoning skills, why do you think it is an inappropriate test for a robot?
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > Since humans use this test to select people with good reasoning skill Sure, we can keep pretending this I guess.
- chownie 4y ago
  A human doing the same SATs will test roughly the same way every time. ChatGPT has achieved 80% in this user's run, will refuse to play at all the next run, will get 45% the following run etc. Stochastic randomisation makes the chatbot useful and provides these moments of impressive capability, it also means unlike humans that capability is in no way consistent.
  - pooper 4y ago
    > A human doing the same SATs will test roughly the same way every time. > ChatGPT has achieved 80% in this user's run, will refuse to play at all the next run, will get 45% the following run etc. While I agree with your conclusion, I want to slightly modify the first sentence. I know this is just one anecdote but I took the SAT 1 twice and did somewhat better the second time. I think this is common as you are more familiar with the test the second time.

hgsgm 4y ago

This comes up a lot in these prompt engineering examples: Why is ChatGPT so stupid and evasive by default, speaking in dumb generalities, but gets very smart when you say "pretend that you are a smart person"?

plaidfuji 4y ago
I think this is the most interesting question as well. There’s got to be a reason the author has to first “build the team” and tell the model to pretend. Maybe specifying these highly skilled “team members” tells the model to weight more heavily the training data that’s more academic in nature (and thus more “correct”). It all comes back to the training corpus..

thomastjeffery 4y ago

GPT itself is in no way comparable to a person in terms of understanding. It makes no effort to determine the meaning of prompts or its training data. Instead, we are comparing the understanding of a person (who takes the SAT and scores something) against the logical soundness of a set of expressions written by other people (the training data), all weighted by GPT's ability to semantically transform those expressions into new expressions (answers).

pornel 4y ago
To me debating whether AI really understands anything is as irrelevant as asking whether submarines can swim. It performs tasks, and does them in its own way.
- EGreg 4y ago
  Anyone know the Chinese Room experiment by Searle? GPT-3 was made for that :)
  - eternalban 4y ago
    As discussed previously on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=the%20Chinese%20room%20argument&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Searle's thought experiment is due for an update. The entire force of the argument is simply to refute using Turing's Imitation game as a means of determining whether machines can think. In Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Turing wrote: "The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the ‘imitation game’. It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either ‘X is A and Y is B’ or ‘X is B and Y is A’. The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus: [question/answer follows ...] "We now ask the question, ‘What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?’ Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, ‘Can machines think?’" https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238 https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238 To misquote Djikstra, the Turing test is as relevant to question of machine intelligence as an underwater mobility test is to the question of whether a submarine is an artificial fish.

lakis 4y ago

A lot of times the answers the ChatGPT gives are so wrong, it's not even funny. -How many chairs I had the day before yesterday? -If you bought 10 chairs yesterday, and now you have 10 chairs, You must have had 19 chairs the day before yesterday. Or another chat -Assume I have 10 chairs today and I bought 10 chairs yesterday, how many chairs I had the day before yesterday? -You would have had 0 chairs the day before yesterday, since you only bought 10 chairs yesterday. -How many chairs I will have tomorrow? -You will have 20 chairs tomorrow if you don't sell or give away any of your chairs today and yesterday. First answer, perfect. Second answer, completely wrong.

deleted 4y ago
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EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

Get back to me when it can navigate my bank chat app to get me to a live agent automatically.