[andywalters]

I don't think the comparison to the image example holds up; while something like a random-ish behavior is at play when it comes to hypothesis generation, the hypothesis evaluation is a different matter. It does seem to reason about its own capabilities intelligently, at least insofar as one can detect coherent reasoning as represented in language.

The program you mention using an array might be a thin version of what I've demonstrated here, but it operates on much the same principle.

Great question about parallels. I suppose the closest biological parallel would be a human brain reasoning about an external agent's character based on behaviors just observed. (But it quickly falls apart past that: unlike human neuroplasticity, because GPT-4 has no mechanism to update its own weights, knowledge about the agent being evaluated is lost at each new inference unless explicitly included in-context.)