Can AI Read Minds? LLM Failures in Common Sense and Cognition
Theory of Mind, Physical Common Sense, Working Memory — testing where text-only LLMs fail in common sense and cognition.
Can AI Read Minds? LLM Failures in Common Sense and Cognition
Humans know that dropped objects fall. We know that if someone leaves a room and the furniture gets rearranged, they will look where they left things, not where things actually are. We know that when a fact gets updated, we should remember the new version.
All of this comes from living in a physical body and navigating the world. LLMs learn from text alone. They have read "objects fall due to gravity" thousands of times, but they have never dropped anything.
This is Part 3 of the LLM Reasoning Failures series, covering three tests in common sense and cognition:
- Theory of Mind (ToM): Can models track what others believe?
Related Posts
LLM Reasoning Failures Part 2: Cognitive Biases — Inherited from Human Data
Anchoring, Order Bias, Sycophancy, Confirmation Bias — cognitive biases from RLHF and training data, tested across 7 models.
LLM Reasoning Failures Part 1: Structural Limitations -- Scaling Won't Fix These
Reversal Curse, Counting, Compositional Reasoning — fundamental Transformer failures tested across 7 models.
Are LLMs Really Smart? Dissecting AI's Reasoning Failures
Stanford researchers analyzed 500+ papers to systematically map LLM reasoning failures. From cognitive biases to the reversal curse, discover where and why AI reasoning breaks down.