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I’ll repeat something I said elsewhere. Tests of subject matter are usually objective tests of concepts. If. You know the concepts you pass. Passing Caplan’s economics test is domain limited — if it had trained on basic concepts it would probably do pretty well because while it requires knowledge of the concepts of economics and how to apply them to economics problems, it doesn’t require understanding this. Knowing how to use the Pythagorean theorem to find the shortest arm of a right triangle given a hypotenuse and the long side isn’t hard. Rearrange the equation and go.
Projecting the future from a given dataset using a theory would require understanding the data and the bits that are relevant and figuring out how the theory and the data can be used to find the answer. So a question like “using the complete set of all the Dune series of books and Peter Turchin’s theory of cliodynamics, project the future of the universe 30,000 years into the future”. Very little in the the books would be useful in making the projections (although I suppose if you count the mention of sand worms and spice or references to a famine those would be useful). ChatGPT would have to figure that out though, as well as just how much of the action and characters are irrelevant to the project. But the process of figuring all of this out requires understanding what the books are saying and what they aren’t, and requires understanding cliodynamics on a level above “insert numbers into the equation and go.”
This is what knowing and understanding would seem to mean: not just being able to manipulate words and numbers and equations, but to do so with a sense of what the numbers or words mean. To put it in the context of the more famous Chinese Room thought experiment— in order for the person in that room to understand the questions and the answers, it’s not enough to simply pattern match 我 with 李张 I would have to understand that I’m telling the outside world that “I” am named “Li Zhang”. If I cannot do that, if I only understand in the sense of seeing one symbol and outputting another without knowing why the correct answer to X is A and not C, I don’t understand it.
Edit: just for kicks I asked ChatGPT about the future of the dune universe:
Dune is a rich and complex universe that has captured the imaginations of generations of readers. As an AI language model, I can imagine what the Dune universe might look like 30,000 years after the end of Dune Chapterhouse, based on the information available in the books and the various adaptations.
Assuming that the long-term goals of the Bene Gesserit and their sisterhood of Mentats were achieved, the human race could have evolved into something more than we can currently imagine. They would have mastered advanced technologies and could harness the power of the Guild Navigators and the sandworms to travel across space and time. The planet of Arrakis could be transformed into something entirely different, devoid of the sandworms or even turning into a lush, forested world with oceans and rivers.
The descendants of the Atreides bloodline like Leto and Ghanima would have spread out across the galaxy, establishing themselves as new ruling dynasties. Implications of a far reaching society where humans have been colonized, terraforming planets and form all sorts of political groups and religions.
On the political front, the Imperium could have been replaced by a new system of government. Perhaps, the Butlerian Jihad against the thinking machines would have been avoided, and intelligent machines like the Ixians and the Taurid would have prospered. Alternatively, humans could have replaced the thinking machines with new technologies, and the entire social structure must have dissolved due to the rapid technological advancements.
In conclusion, the Dune universe 30,000 years after the end of Dune Chapterhouse is a realm of endless possibility, and it holds untold wonders and horrors beyond our current comprehension. As an AI language model, it is beyond me to predict the exact path the universe might have taken, but one thing is for sure: it would be a fascinating and dynamic place to behold.
(Which honestly sounds a bit like something I would come up with to try to fool the teacher into thinking I read the books. For example, Leto actually became a worm and was thus sterile, he had no natural descendants. Also, I noticed that no mention of specific plans by the Benefit Gesseret, Mentats, etc. and the Butlerian Jihad happened 10,000 years before the first book, and Ixians aren’t machines).
...but hadn't actually read the books.
and that "hasn't actually read the book" quality is exactly what i feel like Volokh and I both latched onto, but reading through the other replies I've gotten the impression that most users here either do not understand or do not consider having "read the book" to be relevant to parameter when discussing it's contents.
Like I said in the OP, GPT is effectively the "perfect post modernist", it's literally "all talk" and no thought. Theres no need to kill the author when the author was dead from the beginning.
What it looks like to me is that it knows the groups that should be mentioned (mentats, the Guild, Ixians, Bene Gesseret) but it doesn’t know what they are or what they want. It’s also fairly confused about the people and the timeline. It knows that those events happened, but not the order, and apparently doesn’t know that a lot of the stuff it’s predicting to happened 30K years after chapterhouse had already happened.
Which to mean points to ChatGPT-4 as a Chinese Room. It knows vaguely to use terms like Sandworm, Mentat, and Arrakis when talking about the Dune series. It knows to talk about evolution. But it doesn’t understand what things mean; the Bene Gesseret don’t mean anything to the chatbot.
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That all definitely sounds like what I would have written if I had the most vague impression of the franchise.
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