Human-Like Intuitive Behavior and Reasoning Biases Emerged in Language Models -- and Disappeared in GPT-4
This research addresses the evaluation of emergent traits in LLMs for AI safety and human-AI interaction, though it is incremental as it builds on existing psychological methods.
The study found that GPT-3 exhibited human-like intuitive behavior and cognitive errors, such as in the Cognitive Reflection Test, but these traits disappeared in more advanced models like ChatGPT and GPT-4, which performed hyperrationally.
Large language models (LLMs) are currently at the forefront of intertwining AI systems with human communication and everyday life. Therefore, it is of great importance to evaluate their emerging abilities. In this study, we show that LLMs, most notably GPT-3, exhibit behavior that strikingly resembles human-like intuition -- and the cognitive errors that come with it. However, LLMs with higher cognitive capabilities, in particular ChatGPT and GPT-4, learned to avoid succumbing to these errors and perform in a hyperrational manner. For our experiments, we probe LLMs with the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) as well as semantic illusions that were originally designed to investigate intuitive decision-making in humans. Moreover, we probe how sturdy the inclination for intuitive-like decision-making is. Our study demonstrates that investigating LLMs with methods from psychology has the potential to reveal otherwise unknown emergent traits.