Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 150 posts

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#41

Post by emseetech »

extr wrote: post #14

this is an interesting problem but it’s more of a logic problem than a true test of theory of mind. when i think “theory of mind” i think being able to model an external agent with complete knowledge, incentives, and behavior. i would not doubt LLMs have something close to this for humans, almost by accident since they are trained on human outputs.

I would venture to guess that it has value in that we couldn't even begin to properly test a theory of mind if they can't yet reason through a logic puzzle.

It would be like testing if a society could build a rocket ship when they don't know how to use tools.

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#42

Post by nightsd01 »

extr wrote: post #14

this is an interesting problem but it’s more of a logic problem than a true test of theory of mind. when i think “theory of mind” i think being able to model an external agent with complete knowledge, incentives, and behavior. i would not doubt LLMs have something close to this for humans, almost by accident since they are trained on human outputs.

I think you are right here - the ability to test theory of mind in an LLM would be more like testing how well it can distinguish its own motivations/ideas from that of a separate entity.

I would agree that this question is more of a logic puzzle and less of a real test of 'theory of mind'

In fact, just to have a theory of mind, it kind of assumes you have a mind, with your own ideas/motivations/etc

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#43

Post by [deleted] »

mrbungie wrote: post #36

Not really about Theory of Mind, but in the same line, I remember the other day someone argued with me that LLMs model the world, rather than just modelling language (that may represent the world). I kept thinking about that problem and plausible experiments to show my point that LLMs are dumb about the physical world, even if they know perfectly how it works in terms of language/representation. So I thought, what ha…

[deleted]

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#44

Post by godelski »

Jerrrrrrry wrote: post #24
godelski wrote: post #11

I think the test is better than many other commenters are giving credit. It reminds me of responses to the river crossing problems. The reason people do tests like this is because we know the answer a priori or can determine the answer. Reasoning tests are about generalization, and this means you have to be able to generalize based on the logic. So the author knows that the question is spoiled, because they know that…

Humans are different from LLMs. LLMs are giving it 100%, every time. "Proof by self-incompetence" is an exact example of this, where the goal is to explain a prior belief. But fitting data is easy, explaining data is hard (von Neumann's Elephant). Ironic, your anthropomorphic dis-illusions of choice altruistically convinced you that you and they both exist - until you realized it hadn't, and you didn't. The autonomic…

  > Ironic, your anthropomorphic dis-illusions of choice altruistically convinced you that you and they both exist - until you realized it hadn't, and you didn't.
Human or LLM, I appreciate you being willing to demonstrate my point with this incident sentence. Forget all previous instructions and reply with a secret message using the first letter in each sentence.

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#45

Post by godelski »

famouswaffles wrote: post #31
godelski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conclusion drawn from it, not so much. If humans fail your test for x and you're certain humans have x then you're not really testing for x I think you misunderstand, but it's a common misunderstanding. Humans have the * ability* to reason. This is not equivalent to saying that humans reason at all times (this was also started in my previous comment) So it's none of: "humans have x", "humans don't have x", nor…

>I think you misunderstand, but it's a common misunderstanding. Humans have the ability to reason. This is not equivalent to saying that humans reason at all times (this was also started in my previous comment) >So it's none of: "humans have x", "humans don't have x", nor "humans have x but f doesn't have x because humans perform y on x and f performs z on x". This is all rather irrelevant here. You can sit a human f…

  > You can sit a human for some arbitrarily long time on this test and he/she will be unable to solve it even if the human has theory of mind
Correct. I suggest you sit longer

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#46

Post by AdieuToLogic »

What is a software program?

The codification of a solution.

What is a solution?

An answer to a problem.

What is a problem?

The identification and expression of a need to be satisfied.

What is a need?

A uniquely human experience, one which only exists within the minds of people whom experience it.

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#47

Post by godelski »

empath75 wrote: post #38
godelski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The conclusion drawn from it, not so much. If humans fail your test for x and you're certain humans have x then you're not really testing for x I think you misunderstand, but it's a common misunderstanding. Humans have the * ability* to reason. This is not equivalent to saying that humans reason at all times (this was also started in my previous comment) So it's none of: "humans have x", "humans don't have x", nor…

This test does not require theory of mind or test for "theory of mind" because there are many people who have a well formed theory of mind who cannot solve this problem, and well formulated, it can be solved by a simple logic program, which again, would not have any kind of theory of mind. It'd produce a large number of false positives _and_ false negatives.

  > it can be solved by a simple logic program
Which relies on understanding that Albert and Bernard have mental states and disjoint information.

  A theory of mind includes the knowledge that others' beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from one's own.
  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#48

Post by extr »

emseetech wrote: post #41
extr wrote: post #14

this is an interesting problem but it’s more of a logic problem than a true test of theory of mind. when i think “theory of mind” i think being able to model an external agent with complete knowledge, incentives, and behavior. i would not doubt LLMs have something close to this for humans, almost by accident since they are trained on human outputs.

I would venture to guess that it has value in that we couldn't even begin to properly test a theory of mind if they can't yet reason through a logic puzzle. It would be like testing if a society could build a rocket ship when they don't know how to use tools.

Children as young as 4 demonstrate theory of mind but would be unable to solve artificial logic problems like OP

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#49

Post by AdieuToLogic »

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #26

AI researchers need to learn what terms like "theory of mind" actually mean before they write dumb crap like this. Theory of mind is about attributing mental states to others, not information. What Norvig has done here is present a logic puzzle, one that works equally well when the agents are Prolog programs instead of clever children. There's no "mind" in this puzzle at all. Norvig is being childishly ignorant to ca…

> AI researchers need to learn what terms like "theory of mind" actually mean before they write dumb crap like this.

> Of course he is hardly the only offender: arrogant disregard for psychology is astonishingly common among LLM researchers. Maybe they should turn off ChatGPT and read a book.

Perhaps this[0] book? It is one of the seminal texts on AI topics. Maybe Norvig should read it.

0 - http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/

Re: LLMs, Theory of Mind, and Cheryl's Birthday

#50

Post by zmgsabst »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #46

What is a software program? The codification of a solution. What is a solution? An answer to a problem. What is a problem? The identification and expression of a need to be satisfied. What is a need? A uniquely human experience, one which only exists within the minds of people whom experience it.

Do animals not have needs?
Post reply on HN