AIs are being tested to see how well they understand our thoughts

Do computers know what we are thinking? To find out, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a set of gruelling tests that probe AI’s progress in understanding the world. No AIs have passed the tests yet, but one got extremely close.

The tests examine theory of mind – the ability to reason about another’s beliefs – and are inspired by classic experiments in psychology. Each test consists of a short paragraph describing a scenario involving people and a few questions for the AI to answer about it.…