Theory of Mind May Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models

Michal Kosinski
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Michal Kosinski: Stanford U

Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Abstract: Theory of mind (ToM), or the ability to impute unobservable mental states to others, is central to human social interactions, communication, empathy, self-consciousness, and morality. We tested several language models using 40 classic false-belief tasks widely used to test ToM in humans. The models published before 2020 showed virtually no ability to solve ToM tasks. Yet, the first version of GPT-3 (“davinci-001†), published in May 2020, solved about 40% of false-belief tasks—performance comparable with 3.5-year-old children. Its second version (“davinci-002†; January 2022) solved 70% of false-belief tasks, performance comparable with six-year-olds. Its most recent version, GPT-3.5 (“davinci-003†; November 2022), solved 90% of false-belief tasks, at the level of seven-year-olds. GPT-4 published in March 2023 solved nearly all the tasks (95%). These findings suggest that ToM-like ability (thus far considered to be uniquely human) may have spontaneously emerged as a byproduct of language models’ improving language skills.

Date: 2023-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-neu
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