Comparing Machines and Children: Using Developmental Psychology Experiments to Assess the Strengths and Weaknesses of LaMDA Responses

Understand

Developmental psychologists have spent decades devising experiments to test the intelligence and knowledge of infants and children, tracing the origin of crucial concepts and capacities.

• Moreover, experimental techniques in developmental psychology have been carefully designed to discriminate the cognitive capacities that underlie particular behaviors.
• We propose that using classical experiments from child development is a particularly effective way to probe the computational abilities of AI models, in general, and LLMs in particular.
• First, the methodological techniques of developmental psychology, such as the use of novel stimuli to control for past experience or control conditions to determine whether children are using simple associations, can be equally helpful for assessing the capacities of LLMs.