• Home
  • Uncategorized
  • Are LLMs Smarter Than Chimpanzees? An Evaluation on Perspective Taking and Knowledge State Estimation

arXiv:2601.12410v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Cognitive anthropology suggests that the distinction of human intelligence lies in the ability to infer other individuals’ knowledge states and understand their intentions. In comparison, our closest animal relative, chimpanzees, lack the capacity to do so. With this paper, we aim to evaluate LLM performance in estimating other individuals’ knowledge states and their potential actions. We design two tasks to test (1) if LLMs can predict story characters’ next actions based on their own knowledge vs. improperly using information unavailable from their perspective, and (2) if LLMs can detect when story characters, through their actions, demonstrate knowledge they should not possess. Results reveal that most current state-of-the-art LLMs achieve near-random performance on both tasks, and are substantially inferior to humans. We argue future LLM research should place more weight on the abilities of knowledge estimation and intention understanding.

Subscribe for Updates

Copyright 2025 dijee Intelligence Ltd.   dijee Intelligence Ltd. is a private limited company registered in England and Wales at Media House, Sopers Road, Cuffley, Hertfordshire, EN6 4RY, UK registration number 16808844