>A man and his cousin are in a car crash. The man dies, but the cousin is taken to the emergency room. At the OR, the surgeon looks at the patient and says: “I cannot operate on him. He’s my son.” How is this possible?
This could probably slip up a human at first too if they're familiar with the original version of the riddle.
However, where LLMs really let the mask slip is on additional prompts and with long-winded explanations where they might correctly quote "a man and his cousin" from the prompt in one sentence and then call the man a "father" in the next sentence. Inevitably, the model concludes that the surgeon must be a woman.
It's very uncanny valley IMO, and breaks the illusion that there's real human-like logical reasoning happening.
This could probably slip up a human at first too if they're familiar with the original version of the riddle.
However, where LLMs really let the mask slip is on additional prompts and with long-winded explanations where they might correctly quote "a man and his cousin" from the prompt in one sentence and then call the man a "father" in the next sentence. Inevitably, the model concludes that the surgeon must be a woman.
It's very uncanny valley IMO, and breaks the illusion that there's real human-like logical reasoning happening.