Theory of mind (ToM), or the ability to impute unobservable mental states to others, is central to human social interactions, communication, empathy, self-consciousness, and morality. We tested several language models using 40 classic false-belief tasks widely used to test ToM in humans. The models published before 2020 showed virtually no ability to solve ToM tasks. Yet, the first version of GPT-3 ("davinci-001"), published in May 2020, solved about 40% of false-belief tasks-performance comparable with 3.5-year-old children. Its second version ("davinci-002"; January 2022) solved 70% of false-belief tasks, performance comparable with six-year-olds. Its most recent version, GPT-3.5 ("davinci-003"; November 2022), solved 90% of false-belief tasks, at the level of seven-year-olds. GPT-4 published in March 2023 solved nearly all the tasks (95%). These findings suggest that ToM-like ability (thus far considered to be uniquely human) may have spontaneously emerged as a byproduct of language models' improving language skills.

翻译：心智理论（Theory of Mind, ToM），即对他人的不可观察心理状态进行归因的能力，是人类社会互动、沟通、共情、自我意识及道德的核心。我们采用40项广泛用于人类ToM测试的经典错误信念任务，对多个语言模型进行了评估。2020年之前发布的模型基本不具备解决ToM任务的能力。然而，2020年5月发布的GPT-3首个版本（"davinci-001"）能解决约40%的错误信念任务——其表现可与3.5岁儿童相当。其第二版本（"davinci-002"；2022年1月发布）解决了70%的错误信念任务，表现与6岁儿童相当。最新版本GPT-3.5（"davinci-003"；2022年11月发布）解决了90%的错误信念任务，达到7岁儿童水平。2023年3月发布的GPT-4几乎解决了全部任务（95%）。这些发现表明，类ToM能力（迄今被认为人类独有）可能作为语言模型语言能力提升的副产品而自发涌现。