[fenomas]

> it was literally shown the game with only the legal moves

It's shown token sequences only. It has no idea they represent a game, or that the game has legal and illegal moves. And more importantly, it has no idea that each token modifies the state of a gameboard, or that simulating how that gameboard changes after every token is the only way to understand the token's grammar. It invents all that.

> Could it actually invent Reversi/Othello had it not known about it beforehand?

You mean, could an LLM invent othello even if its training material made no mention of the game or its rules? Presumptively, of course - why not? Suppose you go make up an arbitrary board game right now. If you then ask ChatGPT-4 to invent a boardgame of its own, nothing excludes the possibility that it will describe a game isomorphic to yours. Obviously the odds are very low, but why imagine that it's not possible?

[barrkel]

You're presenting an example of inference of rules from given data as a counterexample for novelty. They're not even in the same category of thing. Invention is not learning. Sometimes invention is interpolation, but sometimes it isn't: corridors is an interesting example, because they are not obviously a remix of anything.

[fenomas]

No, I presented it as a counterexample to the claim that LLMs just statistically regurgitate existing data.