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ChatGPT vs Advent of Code - The Motte

Jan 15, 2024 - themotte.org
The article discusses an experiment conducted to test the performance of ChatGPT-4, a language learning model (LLM), against the Advent of Code (AoC) 2023, an annual programming event. The author used a command line client, chatgpt-cli, to run the output programs and manually fixed trivial syntax mistakes. The experiment was stopped after four consecutive days where ChatGPT was unable to solve part 1 of the problem. The results showed that GPT-4 performed slightly worse than GPT-3.5 in the previous year, solving only two full days compared to three by GPT-3.5. However, ChatGPT Plus performed slightly better, solving four days on its own.

The author concludes that not much has changed in terms of the model's ability to solve complex problems, suggesting that LLMs may have reached their plateau. The author also notes that ChatGPT lacks debugging skills and does not have a "world model" or logical understanding of programming. The author speculates that the model's performance could be due to overfitting, where it has memorized answers to a bunch of standardized tests, and suggests that OpenAI might have a secret test dataset to avoid training set contamination.

Key takeaways:

  • The author conducted an experiment to test how well ChatGPT-4 performs against Advent of Code 2023, a programming event where participants solve problems that unlock daily.
  • ChatGPT-4's performance was slightly worse than GPT-3.5's performance the previous year, solving only 2 full days compared to GPT-3.5's 3 days. However, ChatGPT Plus performed slightly better, solving 4 days on its own.
  • The author suggests that ChatGPT's inability to debug its flawed solutions indicates that it doesn't have a "world model" or a logical understanding of what it's doing when it's programming.
  • The author speculates that the reason GPT-4 didn't perform much better on Advent of Code could be due to overfitting, where it has simply memorized the answers to a bunch of standardized tests.
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