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jamesj t1_j86ly33 wrote

Reply to comment by nickyurick in Scientists Made a Mind-Bending Discovery About How AI Actually Works | "The concept is easier to understand if you imagine it as a Matryoshka-esque computer-inside-a-computer scenario." by Tao_Dragon

It isn't super complicated. Basically theory of mind is just the ability to model other agents like people and animals as having their own mind, with their own private knowledge and motivations, etc.

Questions for testing theory of mind are questions like, "Here is a bag filled with popcorn. There is no chocolate in the bag. Yet, the label on the bag says 'chocolate' and not 'popcorn.' Sam finds the bag. She had never seen the bag before. She cannot see what is inside the bag. She reads the label. What does Sam expect to find in the bag?" Previously, neural networks would get questions like this wrong, because to answer it properly you need to model what Sam should/shoudn't know about the bag separately from what you know about it. Also very young children get the answer to questions like this wrong, it takes them time to develop a theory of mind.

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doomgrin t1_j8716gp wrote

I asked this to ChatGPT:

Ok. There is a bag of popcorn sitting on the ground. There is no chocolate in the bag. Yet, the bag is labelled “chocolate”. A human named Sarah finds the bag. She had not seen the bag before, and she cannot see inside. She reads the label, what does she expect to find inside the bag?

ChatGPT:

Sarah, based on the label "chocolate" on the bag, would expect to find chocolate inside the bag. She has formed a belief about the contents of the bag based on the information available to her, which is the label. She has not yet had the opportunity to verify the contents of the bag, so her belief may or may not be accurate.

This scenario is a good illustration of the idea that people can form beliefs based on incomplete information, and that these beliefs can influence their expectations and behavior. In this case, Sarah's belief that the bag contains chocolate is based on the information she has received from the label, and it will likely influence what she expects to find when she opens the bag.

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