On the other hand, if you ask GPT to explain a joke, it can do it, but if you ask it to explain a joke with the exact same situation but different protagonists (in other words a logically identical but textually different joke), it just makes up some nonsense. So its “understanding” seems limited to a fairly shallow textual level that it can’t extend to an underlying abstract semantic as well as a human can.
Jokes? Writing code? Forget that stuff. Just test it on some very basic story you make up, such as "if you have a bottle of cola and you hate the taste of cola, what will your reaction be if you drink a glass of water?" Obviously this is a trick question since the setup has nothing to do with the question, the cola is irrelevant. Here is how I would answer the question: "you would enjoy the taste as water is refreshing and neutral tasting, most people don't drink enough water and having a drink of water usually feels good. The taste of cola is irrelevant for this question, unless you made a mistake and meant to ask the reaction to drinking cola (in which case if you don't like it the reaction would be disgust or some similar emotion.)"
Here's ChatGPT's answer to the same question:
"
If you dislike the taste of cola and you drink a glass of water, your reaction would likely be neutral to positive. Water has a generally neutral taste that can serve to cleanse the palate, so it could provide a refreshing contrast to the cola you dislike. However, this is quite subjective and can vary from person to person. Some may find the taste of water bland or uninteresting, especially immediately after drinking something flavorful like cola. But in general, water is usually seen as a palate cleanser and should remove or at least lessen the lingering taste of cola in your mouth.
"
I think that is fine. It interpreted my question "have a bottle of cola" as drink the bottle, which is perfectly reasonable, and its answer was consistent with that question. The reasoning and understanding are perfect.
Although it didn't answer the question I intended to ask, clearly it understood and answered the question I actually asked.
Yet I have a counterexample where I’m sure you would have done fine but GPT4 completely missed the point. So whatever it was doing to answer your example, it seems like quite a leap to call it “reasoning and understanding”. If it were “reasoning and understanding”, where that term has a similar meaning to what it would mean if I applied it to you, then it wouldn’t have failed my example.
