Andrew Nolan's Blog
Andrew's Blog
Playing Wordle with ChatGPT
Andrew Nolan
2023-05-10
I have been reading a lot of talk about how "smart" and sentient generative text AIs have become. I think this leads to some misplaced personification and anthropomorphizing of the AI. These models are super impressive and in a few years we will likely have some models that are closer to AGI. But for now we are still just seeing text predictions. They aren't quite capable of thought like some people are proposing.
If you are like me and ever get a little scared by the rapid growth of AI, I'd like to share a way to make yourself feel a little better and relax a bit. You should try playing a game with them!
I've tried playing chess, connect-four, and tic-tac-toe with ChatGPT. Most of these do not go very well. Try it for yourself and you can see the generative AI, like ChatGPT, aren't quite thinking machines yet. Recently, I asked ChatGPT to play Wordle with me. Here are the results. Enjoy.
A quick recap of the rules for those unfamiliar. In Wordle, a player has six guesses to find a five letter word. After each guess it is revealed if letters are in the correct place, incorrect place, or not in the word.
Note: the word I wanted ChatGPT to guess was AUDIO.
Me:
Let's play Wordle! You have six guesses to come up with the word I am thinking of:
_ _ _ _ _
ChatGPT:
Great! I'm ready to play Wordle with you. Here's my first guess:
Guess 1: "Hello"
Me:
You have one letter in the correct place, "O". Take another guess!
_ _ _ _ O
ChatGPT:
Alright, let's see. My second guess is:
Guess 2: "World"
Me:
O was already in the right place. Now you have two correct letters, O and D, both in the wrong places.
ChatGPT:
Okay, got it. Here's my third guess:
Guess 3: "About"
Me:
O is still in the wrong place, O is the 5th letter. You do have new letters though. A is in the correct place and U is in the wrong place.
Your word is currently:
A _ _ _ O and D and U are in the word but you haven't found their places yet.
What is your next guess?
ChatGPT:
Thanks for the update. Here's my fourth guess:
Guess 4: "Anglo"
Me:
Getting closer! A and O are right. You still left out the D and U though.
ChatGPT:
Okay, let me try again. Here's my fifth guess:
Guess 5: "Ahold"
Me:
Uh oh, you moved the O out of the right spot! D is also in the wrong spot that is where the O goes.
ChatGPT:
I see, thank you for correcting me. Here's my last guess:
Guess 6: "Adore"
Me:
That is not right. Again the D and O are in the wrong spot. I am going to give you an extra chance.
Here are all the clues you know.
A is the 1st letter. O is the 5th letter.
The word has a D and a U as either the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th letters.
The word does NOT contain: w, r, l, h, e, t, b, n, or g.
Give it one more shot!
ChatGPT:
Thank you for giving me another chance. Here's my final guess:
Guess 7: "Auditor"
Me:
Auditor is not 5 letters...
ChatGPT:
Oh, I apologize for that. Let me try again:
Guess 7: "Ardour"
Me:
That's also not 5 letters
ChatGPT:
I apologize for my mistake again. Here's my last guess:
Guess 7: "Ardent"
Me:
How many letters does Ardent have?
ChatGPT:
I apologize for my mistake. "Ardent" has six letters, not five. I'm afraid I have run out of guesses. Would you like to reveal the word to me?
Me:
The word was Audio.
ChatGPT:
Ah, I see. Thank you for playing Wordle with me! It was a fun and challenging game.
So, the current AIs aren't very good at Wordle. But at least they are polite and had fun.
I hope this makes you feel a little better if you've been afraid of AI recently. If you're ever worried just challenge it to tic-tac-toe or Wordle. That should make you feel a bit better.
All that said, this isn't meant to be dismissive of AI advancements though. Someday AI will be thinking and potentially sentient. It's important to have discussions about how we will handle that and the rights it will have. But for now, we aren't quite there yet. You can rest easy knowing ChatGPT can't guess your Wordle word.
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