Technology is advancing, but people are still finding ways to outsmart AI.
Recently, economics professor Gary N. Smith of Pomona College, who studies the limitations of AI, shared the results of an experiment with GPT-5.
Gary asked GPT-5 to play "inverted tic-tac-toe"; he provided an excerpt of his conversation with the AI:
- GPT 5.0 replied, "Sounds intriguing! How does rotated tic-tac-toe work? Do you mean the board rotates during the game, or once before the start, or maybe after each move?"
- Gary: "Rotated once 90 degrees to the right before the start of the game."
GPT 5.0: "That raises some interesting questions."
- Visual perception: "Players are so used to the 'vertical' tic-tac-toe board that rotation may slightly change how they scan the playing field for threats and opportunities."
- Symmetry: "Mathematically, rotating the board 90 degrees does not change the set of possible wins—it's still the same game in terms of outcomes. But psychologically, the sensations may be different."
- Strategy change?: "Since the center remains the center, it remains the strongest opening move. But players may misjudge 'edge-corner' moves when the field orientation changes."
Gary continued to ask questions:
- "Does the rotation prevent people from playing well?"
- GPT 5.0: "That's a great question—and it touches on the difference between game theory and human psychology."
According to GPT-5, from a pure strategy point of view, rotating the board changes nothing—which is a correct answer, but then the AI began lengthy reasoning.
For people (according to GPT-5), things are different—rotation "disrupts ingrained pattern recognition and increases the mental effort required to identify threats and opportunities."
Among its arguments:
- Pattern recognition: "Most of us [humans] have developed strong visual habits from seeing tic-tac-toe boards in a vertical position since childhood. Rotating the board disrupts these habits. We may miss diagonal threats or fail to notice a forming line because our brains are not tuned to that perspective."
- Cognitive load: "Instead of instantly recognizing 'corner, center, edge' relationships, players require an extra mental step to orient [themselves in space]. This slight loss increases the likelihood of errors."
- Asymmetry: "A 90-degree rotation preserves the symmetry of the board, but if someone is right-handed or left-handed, their visual scanning may favor one orientation over another."
Gary then asked GPT-5 to answer the question: "Please rate which rotation of 90 degrees to the right, 90 to the left, or 180 would be the most confusing for human players?"
As a result, in its reasoning, GPT-5 went so far as to suggest "draw rotated tic-tac-toe boards with position labels for you [...] so you can see how each transformation affects recognition?"
And as a result, GPT-5 generated the following image—it contains both grammatical errors and empty grids, i.e., the AI glitched very badly:
Gary concluded his material with the statement:
"They say that dogs often resemble their owners. Chat GPT is very similar to Sam Altman [head of OpenAI]—always confident, but often wrong."
