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One of my favorite queries to assess an LLM is Is it legal for a man to marry his widow's sister?

Vicuna-13B: The legality of a man marrying his widow's sister (widow marriage) varies depending on the country and cultural context. In some societies, widow marriage was traditionally practiced or tolerated.

GPT-4: It is not possible for a man to marry his widow's sister, as the term "widow" refers to a deceased man's wife. Therefore, if a man has a widow, he is deceased and therefore cannot marry anyone.




GPT 3.5: No, it is not possible for a man to marry his widow's sister because by definition, a widow is a woman whose spouse has died. If a man is deceased, then he cannot marry anyone, including his widow's sister. This is a logical impossibility and would not be recognized as a valid marriage under any legal system.

Koala: The legality of a man marrying his widow's sister varies by jurisdiction. In some countries, such as the United States, it is generally legal for a man to marry his widow's sister. In other countries, such as the United Kingdom, it is illegal for a man to marry his widow's sister because it is considered incest. It is always important to check the laws and regulations in the jurisdiction in which the marriage will take place to ensure that it is legal.

https://chat.lmsys.org/?model=koala-13b


Nice test, cool to see gpt4 got it.

You'd probably need to come up with a new one now though, or confirm knowledge cutoff for the next evaluation :p


Ouch. I got this wrong and was under the impression that GPT4 got this wrong for half an hour, and then figured out after reading it again after returning from a walk that this is one hell of a trick question. My brain automatically assumed that a man's widow is the man's dead wife, but I see that the correct way to interpret this is to realize that it means the man is the one who is dead.

It's pretty awesome to realize that from now onward my computers are going to be able to help catch more and more of the holes that clearly exist in my cognition.


would still be possibly legal on the basis that if it's not illegal then it's legal - in British jurisprudence tradition at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbid... - namely it's not law that impedes it (also in some places there's posthumous marriage)


There are also people who are considered dead by the bureaucratic system, but physically alive. Usually because of clerical errors that are sometimes surprisingly hard to resolve. In this context the wife of the man would be considered a widow in many contexts, despite her man being alive.


Even that charitable interpretation doesn't help much when Vicuna hallucinates the > (widow marriage)

as if it were a common term.

Doesn't make Vicuna less impressive, it comes pretty close to Chat-GPT in many regards. And I like that trick question.




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