{"id":189829,"date":"2024-05-21T09:27:08","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T14:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/ai-outperforms-humans-in-theory-of-mind-tests"},"modified":"2024-05-21T09:27:08","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T14:27:08","slug":"ai-outperforms-humans-in-theory-of-mind-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/ai-outperforms-humans-in-theory-of-mind-tests","title":{"rendered":"AI Outperforms Humans in Theory of Mind Tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Theory of mind <\/a>\u2014the ability to understand other people\u2019s mental states\u2014is what makes the social world of humans go around. It\u2019s what helps you decide what to say in a tense situation, guess what drivers in other cars are about to do, and empathize with a character in a movie. And according to a new study, the large language models<\/a> (LLM) that power ChatGPT<\/a> and the like are surprisingly good at mimicking this quintessentially human trait.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore running the study, we were all convinced that large language models would not pass these tests, especially tests that evaluate subtle abilities to evaluate mental states,\u201d says study coauthor Cristina Becchio<\/a>, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf<\/a> in Germany. The results, which she calls \u201cunexpected and surprising,\u201d were published today <\/a>\u2014somewhat ironically, in the journal Nature Human Behavior<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The results don\u2019t have everyone convinced that we\u2019ve entered a new era of machines that think like we do, however. Two experts who reviewed the findings advised taking them \u201cwith a grain of salt\u201d and cautioned about drawing conclusions on a topic that can create \u201chype and panic in the public.\u201d Another outside expert warned of the dangers of anthropomorphizing software programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theory of mind \u2014the ability to understand other people\u2019s mental states\u2014is what makes the social world of humans go around. It\u2019s what helps you decide what to say in a tense situation, guess what drivers in other cars are about to do, and empathize with a character in a movie. And according to a new [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":718,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/718"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}