Being able to sort a large list like that is really impressive given how ChatGPT works. I wonder if it's seen enough sorted lists of capitals in its training da

Being able to sort a large list like that is really impressive given how ChatGPT works. I wonder if it's seen enough sorted lists of capitals in its training data to help it. ChatGPT doesn't have any internal working memory. It can't think things out in its head before forming an answer. It formulates its answer one token at a time, but it only gets one pass through its network to make each token. (One token is often about 4 characters, but for simplicity I'll pretend it generates one word at a time.) To sort a list of 50 things, it has to figure out in a single pass which thing comes first. Then in the next pass, which thing comes second. And so on. There's no internal memory between passes either; it only sees what's written in the chat (including its own writing). It can't do loops or iteration internally within a pass either. A human could do this iteratively for any number of items. You just go through the items one by one, keeping track of the earliest alphabetical item so far (using your working memory). Once you've gone through the entire list and found the first item, cross that one off and repeat the process until the entire list is sorted. ChatGPT can't do it that way.