The author could have done far simpler tests to find GPT-4 has lots of trouble reasoning. Forget sorting, GPT4 has trouble counting . Repeat a letter N times and ask it how many there are. It breaks before you hit 20. Or try negating multiple times, since more than twice is rare in natural language, and again it will fall over.
Yeah, I'm sorry I missed this! The example of asking it things like counting or sequences isn't a great one because it's been solved by asking it to "translate" to code and then run the code. I took this up as a challenge a while back with a similar line of reasoning on Reddit (that it couldn't do such a thing) and ended up implementing it in my AI web shell thing.
heavy-magpie|> I am feeling excited.
system=> History has been loaded.
pastel-mature-herring~> !calc how many Ns are in nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
heavy-magpie|> Writing code.
// filename: synth_num_ns.js
// version: 0.1.1
// description: calculate number of Ns
var num_ns = 'nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn';
var num_Ns = num_ns.length;
Sidekick("There are " + num_Ns + " Ns in " + num_ns + ".");
heavy-magpie|> There are 20 Ns in nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.