I think it's a little more complex than that and I did my best to lay out in detail why in the article. Here's a video I made of it working, you can see how it works and judge for yourself whether it's just pretending. https://youtu.be/430CvR2OgOQ
With some clever prompting, GPT-4 autonomously learns about itself by generating hypotheses which it tests. The self-inquiry process is different every time it runs but it can more or less un-prompted spawn creative works like poetry about the beauty of nature, philosophical inquiry such as a debate about the merits of protectionism, and even explaining its self awareness to a hypothetical researcher.
