This seems like a simulator in the same way the human imagination is a simulator. I could mentally simulate a few chess moves after the ones you prompted. After a while (probably a short while) I’d start losing track of things and start making bad moves. Eventually I’d probably make illegal moves, or maybe just write random move-like character strings if I was given some motivation for doing so and thought I could get away with it.
Yes, it sure felt like that. I don’t know whether you played through the game or not, but as a casual chess player, I’m very familiar with the experience of trying to follow a game from just the notation and experiencing exactly what you describe. Of course a master can do that easily and impeccably, and it’s easy to believe that GPT-3 could do that too with the right tuning and prompting. I don’t have the chops to try that, but if it’s correct it would make your ‘human imagination’ simile still more compelling. Similarly, the way GPT-3 “babbles” like a toddler just acquiring language sometimes, but then can become more coherent with better / more elaborate / recursive prompting is a strong rhyme with a human imagination maturing through its activity in a world of words.
Of course a compelling analogy is just a compelling analogy… but that’s not nothing!
It’s almost a cliche that a chess engine doesn’t “think like a human”, but we have here the suggestion not only that GPT could conceivably attain impeccable performance as a chess simulator, but perhaps also in such a way that it would “think like a human [grandmaster or better]”. Purely speculative, of course...
This seems like a simulator in the same way the human imagination is a simulator. I could mentally simulate a few chess moves after the ones you prompted. After a while (probably a short while) I’d start losing track of things and start making bad moves. Eventually I’d probably make illegal moves, or maybe just write random move-like character strings if I was given some motivation for doing so and thought I could get away with it.
Yes, it sure felt like that. I don’t know whether you played through the game or not, but as a casual chess player, I’m very familiar with the experience of trying to follow a game from just the notation and experiencing exactly what you describe. Of course a master can do that easily and impeccably, and it’s easy to believe that GPT-3 could do that too with the right tuning and prompting. I don’t have the chops to try that, but if it’s correct it would make your ‘human imagination’ simile still more compelling. Similarly, the way GPT-3 “babbles” like a toddler just acquiring language sometimes, but then can become more coherent with better / more elaborate / recursive prompting is a strong rhyme with a human imagination maturing through its activity in a world of words.
Of course a compelling analogy is just a compelling analogy… but that’s not nothing!
It’s almost a cliche that a chess engine doesn’t “think like a human”, but we have here the suggestion not only that GPT could conceivably attain impeccable performance as a chess simulator, but perhaps also in such a way that it would “think like a human [grandmaster or better]”. Purely speculative, of course...