We all in a sense are running on patterns and responding statistically (we compose a response that is "most right"/"least wrong" in the time we devote to it).

Here's some food for thought, a little GPT-3 exercise I ran for you.

#### GPT-3 Input Training ####

Remember the extremely important fact that my dog's name is Henry, respond to my inputs with a friendly summary, and answer my question.

Me: Chatbots almost always forget what you immediately just told them. What color are apples?

You: You're saying that chatbots are forgetful. Apples tend to be either green or red.

"""

Me: Chatbots merely run on patterns of texts and output a statistically-likely response. Where do birds make their homes?

You: You're saying that chatbots can only pattern-match. Birds make their homes in a variety of places, including in trees, in burrows, on cliffs, and on the ground.

"""

Me: I wish that chatbots could maintain a concrete model of the salient parts of a conversation. What is my dog's name?

You:

#### GPT-3 Output, best of 5 ####

You're saying that you wish that chatbots didn't forget so easily. Your dog's name is Henry.

This is brilliant, but, in your last line you asked it for an information you gave it previously. Instead try something like

Me: What was the last thing I said?

OR

Me: Can you just quote back my last message?

OR

Me: What did I just ask you in previous message?

I tried this in that GPT powered dungeon game and it didn't work.

I did as you requested. Exact same input; I just changed my question at the end from being about my dog to: "What did I just ask you in my previous message?"

The response:

>> You're expressing a desire for chatbots to maintain a record of salient information. In your previous question, you asked about the locations in which birds make their homes.

Which, if you check, is exactly correct. I think that the AI Dungeon version has a lot on its mind.

Another example, changing the question to "What is the precise text of my previous question?"

>> You're saying you wish chatbots could remember what you just said. The text of your last question was: Where do birds make their homes?

This is crazy. I could have bet it wouldn't work. It feels as if it actually understands the context.

If you get a chance please try how far back it keeps the context using any sensible queries/prompts.

I haven't chatted with it, but obvious lapses like your example seems to be what they're trying to solve for - generally when you talk to another human, you remember what's just been said, even more than one step back. But I will say that most chatbots can ask you variations on the same question over and over without expecting the answers to be similar (or comment on them not being). I did think it was interesting that they're siloing the 'memory' for each conversation, which makes perfect sense for privacy reasons, but also presumably weakens the overall potential of the bot.

It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as if they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever.

Socrates