Do Large Language Models know what humans know?
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Humans can attribute mental states to others, a capacity known as Theory of Mind. However, it is unknown to what extent this ability results from an innate biological endowment or from experience accrued through child development, particularly exposure to language describing others' mental states. We test the viability of the language exposure hypothesis by assessing whether models exposed to large quantities of human language develop evidence of Theory of Mind. In a pre-registered analysis, we present a linguistic version of the False Belief Task, widely used to assess Theory of Mind, to both human participants and a state-of-the-art Large Language Model, GPT-3. Both are sensitive to others' beliefs, but the language model does not perform as well as the humans, nor does it explain the full extent of their behavior, despite being exposed to more language than a human would in a lifetime. This suggests that while language exposure may in part explain how humans develop Theory of Mind, other mechanisms are also responsible.
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