Do large language models resemble humans in language use?

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Cai, Zhenguang G., Duan, Xufeng, Haslett, David A., Wang, Shuqi, Pickering, Martin J.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Cai, Zhenguang G.
Duan, Xufeng
Haslett, David A.
Wang, Shuqi
Pickering, Martin J.
author_facet Cai, Zhenguang G.
Duan, Xufeng
Haslett, David A.
Wang, Shuqi
Pickering, Martin J.
contents Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Vicuna have shown remarkable capacities in comprehending and producing language. However, their internal workings remain a black box, and it is unclear whether LLMs and chatbots can develop humanlike characteristics in language use. Cognitive scientists have devised many experiments that probe, and have made great progress in explaining, how people comprehend and produce language. We subjected ChatGPT and Vicuna to 12 of these experiments ranging from sounds to dialogue, preregistered and with 1000 runs (i.e., iterations) per experiment. ChatGPT and Vicuna replicated the human pattern of language use in 10 and 7 out of the 12 experiments, respectively. The models associated unfamiliar words with different meanings depending on their forms, continued to access recently encountered meanings of ambiguous words, reused recent sentence structures, attributed causality as a function of verb semantics, and accessed different meanings and retrieved different words depending on an interlocutor's identity. In addition, ChatGPT, but not Vicuna, nonliterally interpreted implausible sentences that were likely to have been corrupted by noise, drew reasonable inferences, and overlooked semantic fallacies in a sentence. Finally, unlike humans, neither model preferred using shorter words to convey less informative content, nor did they use context to resolve syntactic ambiguities. We discuss how these convergences and divergences may result from the transformer architecture. Overall, these experiments demonstrate that LLMs such as ChatGPT (and Vicuna to a lesser extent) are humanlike in many aspects of human language processing.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2303_08014
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Do large language models resemble humans in language use?
Cai, Zhenguang G.
Duan, Xufeng
Haslett, David A.
Wang, Shuqi
Pickering, Martin J.
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Vicuna have shown remarkable capacities in comprehending and producing language. However, their internal workings remain a black box, and it is unclear whether LLMs and chatbots can develop humanlike characteristics in language use. Cognitive scientists have devised many experiments that probe, and have made great progress in explaining, how people comprehend and produce language. We subjected ChatGPT and Vicuna to 12 of these experiments ranging from sounds to dialogue, preregistered and with 1000 runs (i.e., iterations) per experiment. ChatGPT and Vicuna replicated the human pattern of language use in 10 and 7 out of the 12 experiments, respectively. The models associated unfamiliar words with different meanings depending on their forms, continued to access recently encountered meanings of ambiguous words, reused recent sentence structures, attributed causality as a function of verb semantics, and accessed different meanings and retrieved different words depending on an interlocutor's identity. In addition, ChatGPT, but not Vicuna, nonliterally interpreted implausible sentences that were likely to have been corrupted by noise, drew reasonable inferences, and overlooked semantic fallacies in a sentence. Finally, unlike humans, neither model preferred using shorter words to convey less informative content, nor did they use context to resolve syntactic ambiguities. We discuss how these convergences and divergences may result from the transformer architecture. Overall, these experiments demonstrate that LLMs such as ChatGPT (and Vicuna to a lesser extent) are humanlike in many aspects of human language processing.
title Do large language models resemble humans in language use?
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08014