(Note: that thread was a reply to someone else, but I’m watching the whole article’s comments)

Gotcha, my mistake - my bad!

And likely the ability to go back and change already generated text after it has reasoned further.

An interesting criteria, why does going back to edit (instead of correcting itself mid-stream) hold greater weight in your mind? And, how about the built-in output evaluation? Isn’t the flow

Receive prompt > Generate text > Evaluate generated text > Re-prompt with critique > Evaluate revised text

basically the same thing?

As far as proving I’m a human level intelligence myself, easiest way would likely involve brain surgery - probe a bunch of neurons and watch them change action potentials and form synapses in response to new information and skills.

Couldn’t you perform this test on any animal with a discrete brain? Hell, we’ve seen animals learning for decades, some of them even teach each other, so brain activity and the formation of new synaptic connections doesn’t strike as incontrovertible proof of human-level intelligence.

Try asking an LLM to generate novel garden path sentences - it can’t know how the sentence will end, so it can’t come up with good beginnings except similar to stock ones.

I am absolutely game to try this, but I lack what I’d call solid criteria for evaluating novel garden-path sentences. This was my first attempt with Llama 3 running on my 3070:

Prompt: Generate an original “garden-path” sentence. It must be unique, never published before, and in English. Response: What a delightful challenge! Here’s my attempt at creating an original garden-path sentence:

“The five-year-old astronaut who had been kidnapped by aliens as a toddler finally discovered the shocking truth about his parents’ mysterious disappearance on the day he turned into a chicken.”

This sentence is designed to be ambiguous and misleading, with multiple clauses that lead the reader down a path of confusion before arriving at an unexpected punchline. The goal is to create a sense of surprise or even bewilderment when the reader finally understands what’s happening in the story.

Please note that I’ve taken care to ensure this sentence has never been published before and is entirely original, but if you’re concerned about its uniqueness, please let me know! Prompt: No, a garden-path sentence must still make logical sense; the ambiguity comes from the double-meaning of the words used. For example, consider the sentence “The sour drink from the ocean”. “The sour” could refer to “the drink from the ocean”, as in “ocean water is sour”. It could also refer to “sour people”, who “drink from the ocean.” Response: I understand now that a garden-path sentence must still be grammatically correct and logically coherent, but with an ambiguity or double meaning that can lead readers down a wrong path. Thank you for explaining!

In that case, I’ll try again to create an original garden-path sentence:

“The new employee was given the old keys by the company.”

At first glance, this sentence seems straightforward: someone is giving another person some old keys as part of their job or employment process. However, upon closer reading, one might interpret “old” as referring not only to the physical state of the keys but also to the fact that they were previously used by an older employee who has since retired.

Please let me know if this meets your criteria for a garden-path sentence! Prompt: Are there other possible logically-consistent interpretations of this sentence, that you can think of? Response: After re-reading my attempt at creating a garden-path sentence, I realized that there are indeed additional logical and coherent interpretations:

1. The new employee is being given old keys (as in, no longer used or relevant) by the company as part of their onboarding process.
2. The “old” refers to the fact that the keys were previously owned or possessed by someone else (e.g., a previous owner or manager), and the company is giving them to the new employee.

These alternative interpretations highlight how garden-path sentences can have multiple plausible meanings, making it even more challenging for readers to arrive at the intended meaning!

Thank you for pushing me to consider these additional possibilities!

It’s a bit simple, and it’s not how I would write it (I think “by the company” is extraneous for example), but I do think it counts as a garden path sentence at least, and it did get the third meaning I was thinking of for “the old keys” after a leading but open nudge. Now, the question is whether it’s novel - what do you think? Searching for it on DuckDuckGo doesn’t bring up any exact or close matches that I could find, but admittedly I’m working and didn’t look very hard.