4 ms·

GPT-4 meanwhile: To solve this puzzle, the man must follow these steps to transport his belongings across the river without any of them being harmed or eaten:

GPT-4 meanwhile: To solve this puzzle, the man must follow these steps to transport his belongings across the river without any of them being harmed or eaten: The man takes the meat-eating goat across the river first, leaving the vegan wolf and the cabbage on the initial shore. He then returns alone to the initial shore. Next, the man takes the cabbage across the river. Upon arriving on the other shore, he leaves the cabbage but takes the goat back with him to the initial shore. The man then takes the vegan wolf across the river, leaving it with the cabbage on the other shore. He returns alone to the initial shore. Finally, the man takes the meat-eating goat across the river one last time. Now, all his belongings are safely on the other shore: the cabbage, the vegan wolf, and the meat-eating goat.

jamiek88 4y ago
Ok. But (edit) still wrong! Cabbage and vegan wolf left alone.
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
  It's still wrong though.
feoren 4y ago
That is incorrect. In fact it's exactly what the original poster was pointing out: it's filling in the answer based on the text that it's read before, where the goat wanted to eat the cabbage and the wolf wanted to eat the goat. That's not this problem! In GPT-4's answer, the vegan wolf eats the cabbage as soon as the man and goat are on the boat. That's exactly the point: it regurgitated its memorized answer, instead of actually analyzing the question.
- BoiledCabbage 4y ago
  The funny thing is though your point here is working against your argument. You are saying that GPT is doing a poor job of showing it is a great artificial intelligence. But nobody is saying that it has infallible intelligence. It is making the same mistake that now two different humans have made in the same situation. Both me and OP above. It is failing in the same way that humans fail at this problem! By pattern matching and assuming it's the goat proble! You're arguing that gpt 4 isn't a sound logic engine and not are most people. A tool trained on human input, when given this problem is making similar mistakes that we make. Are there a set of people that would get this problem right? Yup. Are there also a set of people that would make this exact mistake? Yup. Your upset that is behaving like the "wrong" group of humans. Your thinking of it as an expert. Instead think of it as a result smart and well read high school student. There are things you can delegate to it that it will do well. But you also need to double check its work as it will make mistakes.
  - the_af 4y ago
    I don't think this is it. This is not a failure mode for humans. No human (*) will forget in such a short problem statement that a vegan wolf cannot be left alone with a cabbage; humans will instead forget one of the states is invalid after trying some combinations. GPT's failure mode is only possible if it doesn't understand the meaning of the (apparently nonsensical) combination of words "vegan wolf". Humans don't pattern match like this; humans are capable of understanding the meaning of a combination of words they've never encountered before. (*) you know what I mean with "no human". Of course, there are deranged people or whimsical people or people who just will say about anything.
    - BoiledCabbage 4y ago
      > No human (*) will forget in such a short problem statement that a vegan wolf cannot be left alone with a cabbage; Two humans in this thread just read the solution and thought it was correct. Me being one of them. Another further down in the thread manually wrote up a solution making the exact same mistake. I think you want things to be different, but they're not. Your answering how you'd think humans would respond, not how people actually respond. Does it mean everyone made that same mistake? No, but I bet a bunch did.
      - the_af 4y ago
        > Two humans in this thread just read the solution and thought it was correct. My guess is that they just skim read and missed what ChatGPT actually wrote, it's not that they misunderstood what "vegan wolf" means [1]. On the other hand, you cannot skim read what you are writing yourself, that's not how the mind works. The gist of the problem here is that, unlike a human, ChatGPT doesn't understand the words it generates, which leads to hilarious results. As another example, look at the "debugging" of GPT-4's assumptions someone posted in a sibling comment: it "knows" the vegan wolf will eat plant-based food and it "knows" a cabbage is a plant, yet it "thinks" the wolf "will not harm the cabbage"... which is a misunderstanding no human will make (if they know what "vegan" and "cabbage" mean). This doesn't happen in a long chain of reasoning (where a human can lose the line of thought) but in very short paragraphs, one right after the other! This failure mode requires not understanding the individual assumptions, which prevents GPT from making the connection. I was asked for an error that showed GPT misunderstanding something no person would, and I did. [1] question for you: did you think the wrong solution was right because you thought a vegan wolf cannot eat the cabbage (let me bet this is NOT what crossed your mind) or because the person who posted it made it look as if it was the right solution and you skim read it without paying attention, assuming "this person said it's right and it's posting it as a rebuttal, so it's likely right" (this is my bet)? If the latter, this failure mode is not one of misunderstanding what "vegan wolf" means (which is what debugging GPT's process shows), but one of very human laziness/jumping to conclusions. Do note this cannot happen when you write the solution yourself!
the_af 4y ago
> The man takes the meat-eating goat across the river first, leaving the vegan wolf and the cabbage on the initial shore. If the man leaves the vegan wolf and the cabbage unattended, it's bye bye cabbage!

jamiek88 4y ago

Ok. But (edit) still wrong! Cabbage and vegan wolf left alone.

SAI_Peregrinus 4y ago
It's still wrong though.

feoren 4y ago

That is incorrect. In fact it's exactly what the original poster was pointing out: it's filling in the answer based on the text that it's read before, where the goat wanted to eat the cabbage and the wolf wanted to eat the goat. That's not this problem! In GPT-4's answer, the vegan wolf eats the cabbage as soon as the man and goat are on the boat. That's exactly the point: it regurgitated its memorized answer, instead of actually analyzing the question.

BoiledCabbage 4y ago
The funny thing is though your point here is working against your argument. You are saying that GPT is doing a poor job of showing it is a great artificial intelligence. But nobody is saying that it has infallible intelligence. It is making the same mistake that now two different humans have made in the same situation. Both me and OP above. It is failing in the same way that humans fail at this problem! By pattern matching and assuming it's the goat proble! You're arguing that gpt 4 isn't a sound logic engine and not are most people. A tool trained on human input, when given this problem is making similar mistakes that we make. Are there a set of people that would get this problem right? Yup. Are there also a set of people that would make this exact mistake? Yup. Your upset that is behaving like the "wrong" group of humans. Your thinking of it as an expert. Instead think of it as a result smart and well read high school student. There are things you can delegate to it that it will do well. But you also need to double check its work as it will make mistakes.
- the_af 4y ago
  I don't think this is it. This is not a failure mode for humans. No human (*) will forget in such a short problem statement that a vegan wolf cannot be left alone with a cabbage; humans will instead forget one of the states is invalid after trying some combinations. GPT's failure mode is only possible if it doesn't understand the meaning of the (apparently nonsensical) combination of words "vegan wolf". Humans don't pattern match like this; humans are capable of understanding the meaning of a combination of words they've never encountered before. (*) you know what I mean with "no human". Of course, there are deranged people or whimsical people or people who just will say about anything.
  - BoiledCabbage 4y ago
    > No human (*) will forget in such a short problem statement that a vegan wolf cannot be left alone with a cabbage; Two humans in this thread just read the solution and thought it was correct. Me being one of them. Another further down in the thread manually wrote up a solution making the exact same mistake. I think you want things to be different, but they're not. Your answering how you'd think humans would respond, not how people actually respond. Does it mean everyone made that same mistake? No, but I bet a bunch did.
    - the_af 4y ago
      > Two humans in this thread just read the solution and thought it was correct. My guess is that they just skim read and missed what ChatGPT actually wrote, it's not that they misunderstood what "vegan wolf" means [1]. On the other hand, you cannot skim read what you are writing yourself, that's not how the mind works. The gist of the problem here is that, unlike a human, ChatGPT doesn't understand the words it generates, which leads to hilarious results. As another example, look at the "debugging" of GPT-4's assumptions someone posted in a sibling comment: it "knows" the vegan wolf will eat plant-based food and it "knows" a cabbage is a plant, yet it "thinks" the wolf "will not harm the cabbage"... which is a misunderstanding no human will make (if they know what "vegan" and "cabbage" mean). This doesn't happen in a long chain of reasoning (where a human can lose the line of thought) but in very short paragraphs, one right after the other! This failure mode requires not understanding the individual assumptions, which prevents GPT from making the connection. I was asked for an error that showed GPT misunderstanding something no person would, and I did. [1] question for you: did you think the wrong solution was right because you thought a vegan wolf cannot eat the cabbage (let me bet this is NOT what crossed your mind) or because the person who posted it made it look as if it was the right solution and you skim read it without paying attention, assuming "this person said it's right and it's posting it as a rebuttal, so it's likely right" (this is my bet)? If the latter, this failure mode is not one of misunderstanding what "vegan wolf" means (which is what debugging GPT's process shows), but one of very human laziness/jumping to conclusions. Do note this cannot happen when you write the solution yourself!

the_af 4y ago

> The man takes the meat-eating goat across the river first, leaving the vegan wolf and the cabbage on the initial shore. If the man leaves the vegan wolf and the cabbage unattended, it's bye bye cabbage!