Dwarkesh Patel: observation

Transcript context

…No, they will respond to that question right. But they have no prediction in the substantive sense that they won’t be surprised by what happens. If something happens that isn’t what you might say they predicted, they will not change because an unexpected thing has happened. To learn that, they’d have to make an adjustment. I think a capability like this does exist in context. It’s interesting to watch a model do chain of thought. Suppose it’s trying to solve a math problem. It’ll say, “Okay, I’m going to approach this problem using this approach first.” It’ll write this out and be like, “Oh wait, I just realized this is the wrong conceptual way to approach the problem. I’m going to restart with another approach.” That flexibility does exist in context, right? Do you have something else in mind or do you just think that you need to extend this capability across longer horizons? I’m just saying they don’t have in any meaningful sense a prediction of what will happen next. They will not be surprised by what happens next. They’ll not make any changes if something happens, based on what happens.…

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