[hackinthebochs]

The react programming example isn't the only example of GPT-3 writing code. There was an example of it writing python programs going around before they opened up the API. It was impressive. There was no reason to think it had seen the exact examples before.

Also it isn't the case that one needs to be perfect at algorithmic thinking to be capable of some amount of reasoning. I don't claim that GPT-3 is perfect, but that its not just copy and pasting pieces of text it has seen before. It is coming up with new sequences of text based on the structure of the surrounding text and the prompt, in a manner that indicates it has a representation (albeit imperfect) of the semantic properties of the text and can compose them in meaningful ways. Handwavy responses do nothing to undermine the apparent novelty it creates.

>encode simple boolean logic and if-else is... well.. underwhelming. Stuff like that has been happening for a long time with these models, and no one has made claims that the models were "reasoning".

Seems like you're just moving the goalposts as always happens when it comes to AI advances. What do you take to be "reasoning" if that isn't an example of it?