5 ms·

I think you may have misstated the puzzle. It's ok to leave the lion and the cabbage together, assuming it's not a vegetarian lion.

valine 4y ago
It’s an intensionally misstated problem to see if gpt4 will correctly take the lion across first and leave the goat.
- nonfamous 4y ago
  Ah, I had missed that interpretation. Although, that may explain why GPT-4 got it wrong: there's so much context in its training data about the relationship between lions and humans, and this puzzle specifically, that like this human its response was swayed...
  - colinmorelli 4y ago
    But I think that's the whole point of the exercise? That GPT-4 is leaning on stringing tokens together in a reply rather than reasoning through the problem itself which, I would think, would be "required" for AGI (though we may end up finding out that well trained language models in specific domains eliminate the need for generalized cognition). In any case, it's an interesting exercise regardless of your opinion/stance on the matter!
    - arrrg 4y ago
      But the human (in the comment chain) here made exactly the same mistake! In that sense this test doesn’t seem to be a good fit for testing the reasoning capabilities. Since it‘s also easy to get wrong for humans (and humans also don’t always reason about everything from first principles, especially if they have similar answers already cached in their memory). It seems you would need novel puzzles that aren’t really common (even if in kind) and don’t really sound similar to existing puzzles to get a handle on its reasoning capabilities.
      - colinmorelli 4y ago
        The human recognized that they made the mistake and fixed it. As mentioned in the original comment, GPT failed to recognize the mistake even after being told. That's the key here that indicates it can't "reason." There are open questions about whether or not it really needs to reason given sufficient training, but that seems to be the gap here between the human and the machine.
        famouswaffles 4y ago
        Rewrite the problem in way that doesn't make it biased to common priors and it reasons it out just fine "Suppose I have an object of type C, an object of type G and an object of type L, and I need to get them across a river. I have a boat that can only carry myself and a single other object. I am not allowed to leave the objects of type C and L alone together, and I am not allowed to leave the objects of type L and G alone together. How can I safely get all three across?" "This is a classic puzzle known as the "river crossing problem". Here's how you can safely get all three objects across the river: First, take the object of type L across the river. Return alone to the original side of the river. Take the object of type C across the river. Return with the object of type L to the original side of the river. Take the object of type G across the river. Return alone to the original side of the river. Finally, take the object of type L across the river again. By following these steps, you can safely transport all three objects across the river without violating the restrictions given in the problem. Note that you have to start with the object of type L because it cannot be left alone with either of the other two objects. Once L is transported to the other side, you can use it to ensure that C and G are never left alone together." Or With Bing, you don't even need to tell you what it assumed wrong - I just told it that it's not quite the same as the classic puzzle, and it responded by correctly identifying the difference and asking me if that's what I meant, but forgot that lion still eats the goat. When I pointed that out, it solved the puzzle correctly.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - famouswaffles 4y ago
jprete 4y ago
He didn’t misstate the puzzle, the whole point is to give an alternative version of the puzzle, and GPT 4 doesn’t notice that alternative. It’s exactly as difficult as the standard version as long as you are doing the logic instead of pattern-matching the puzzle form to text.
LesZedCB 4y ago
this here is why it's not fair to criticize GPT-4 so quickly on this question. for the record, I made the same mistake as nonfamous at first, i almost commented "but it's correct" before going back to double check what i was missing. i simply skimmed the problem, recognized it as a common word problem and totally missed the unusual constraints from the question. i just didn't pay attention to the whole question.
- patrickas 4y ago
  Your comment reminded me of this article: Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who-are-not-concentrating-are-not-general https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who...
MrPatan 4y ago
Which to be fair is what most people reading that problem understood the first time. I wonder what would happen if you then tell gpt "No, it's the lion that can't be with the cabbage, not the goat, try again"
- int_19h 4y ago
  It's even better. You can tell it that it's not quite the classic puzzle, and then it will actually figure out the differences and summarize them. From there it can solve it.

valine 4y ago

It’s an intensionally misstated problem to see if gpt4 will correctly take the lion across first and leave the goat.

nonfamous 4y ago
Ah, I had missed that interpretation. Although, that may explain why GPT-4 got it wrong: there's so much context in its training data about the relationship between lions and humans, and this puzzle specifically, that like this human its response was swayed...
- colinmorelli 4y ago
  But I think that's the whole point of the exercise? That GPT-4 is leaning on stringing tokens together in a reply rather than reasoning through the problem itself which, I would think, would be "required" for AGI (though we may end up finding out that well trained language models in specific domains eliminate the need for generalized cognition). In any case, it's an interesting exercise regardless of your opinion/stance on the matter!
  - arrrg 4y ago
    But the human (in the comment chain) here made exactly the same mistake! In that sense this test doesn’t seem to be a good fit for testing the reasoning capabilities. Since it‘s also easy to get wrong for humans (and humans also don’t always reason about everything from first principles, especially if they have similar answers already cached in their memory). It seems you would need novel puzzles that aren’t really common (even if in kind) and don’t really sound similar to existing puzzles to get a handle on its reasoning capabilities.
    - colinmorelli 4y ago
      The human recognized that they made the mistake and fixed it. As mentioned in the original comment, GPT failed to recognize the mistake even after being told. That's the key here that indicates it can't "reason." There are open questions about whether or not it really needs to reason given sufficient training, but that seems to be the gap here between the human and the machine.
      - famouswaffles 4y ago
        Rewrite the problem in way that doesn't make it biased to common priors and it reasons it out just fine "Suppose I have an object of type C, an object of type G and an object of type L, and I need to get them across a river. I have a boat that can only carry myself and a single other object. I am not allowed to leave the objects of type C and L alone together, and I am not allowed to leave the objects of type L and G alone together. How can I safely get all three across?" "This is a classic puzzle known as the "river crossing problem". Here's how you can safely get all three objects across the river: First, take the object of type L across the river. Return alone to the original side of the river. Take the object of type C across the river. Return with the object of type L to the original side of the river. Take the object of type G across the river. Return alone to the original side of the river. Finally, take the object of type L across the river again. By following these steps, you can safely transport all three objects across the river without violating the restrictions given in the problem. Note that you have to start with the object of type L because it cannot be left alone with either of the other two objects. Once L is transported to the other side, you can use it to ensure that C and G are never left alone together." Or With Bing, you don't even need to tell you what it assumed wrong - I just told it that it's not quite the same as the classic puzzle, and it responded by correctly identifying the difference and asking me if that's what I meant, but forgot that lion still eats the goat. When I pointed that out, it solved the puzzle correctly.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - famouswaffles 4y ago

jprete 4y ago

He didn’t misstate the puzzle, the whole point is to give an alternative version of the puzzle, and GPT 4 doesn’t notice that alternative. It’s exactly as difficult as the standard version as long as you are doing the logic instead of pattern-matching the puzzle form to text.

LesZedCB 4y ago

this here is why it's not fair to criticize GPT-4 so quickly on this question. for the record, I made the same mistake as nonfamous at first, i almost commented "but it's correct" before going back to double check what i was missing. i simply skimmed the problem, recognized it as a common word problem and totally missed the unusual constraints from the question. i just didn't pay attention to the whole question.

patrickas 4y ago
Your comment reminded me of this article: Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who-are-not-concentrating-are-not-general https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4AHXDwcGab5PhKhHT/humans-who...

MrPatan 4y ago

Which to be fair is what most people reading that problem understood the first time. I wonder what would happen if you then tell gpt "No, it's the lion that can't be with the cabbage, not the goat, try again"

int_19h 4y ago
It's even better. You can tell it that it's not quite the classic puzzle, and then it will actually figure out the differences and summarize them. From there it can solve it.