What Kind of Mind Does ChatGPT Have?

This past November, soon after OpenAI released ChatGPT, a software developer named Thomas Ptacek asked it to provide instructions for removing a peanut-butter sandwich from a VCR, written in the style of the King James Bible. ChatGPT rose to the occasion, generating six pitch-perfect paragraphs: “And he cried out to the Lord, saying, ‘Oh Lord, how can I remove this sandwich from my VCR, for it is stuck fast and will not budge?’ ” Ptacek posted a screenshot of the exchange on Twitter. “I simply cannot be cynical about a technology that can accomplish this,” he concluded. The…