AI models can outperform humans in tests to identify mental states

Theory of mind is a hallmark of emotional and social intelligence that allows us to infer people's intentions and engage and empathize with one another. Most children pick up these kinds of skills between three and five years of age. The researchers tested two families of large language models, OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 and three versions of Meta's Llama, on tasks designed to test the theory of mind in humans, including identifying false beliefs, recognizing faux pas, and understanding what is being implied rather than said directly. They also tested 1,907 human participants in order to compare the sets of scores. The team conducted five types of tests.