It can, just not very well. Often the issue is people have it count letters and words but those aren’t the abstractions or deals with. It would be like if I told you to pick up the ball primarily reflecting 450nm light and called you colorblind if you couldn’t do it.

GPT is built on a computer. It is not a computer itself. I am made of cells, but I am not able to perform mitosis.

It’s also very capable of offloading counting tasks, since computers are so good at that. Just suggest it format things in code and evaluate it.

Here’s an example of it counting. I’m pretty confident it’s never seen this exact problem before.

How many fruits are in this list? banana, hammer, wrench, watermelon, screwdriver, pineapple, peach

There are 4 fruits in the list you provided: banana, watermelon, pineapple, and peach. The other items are tools, not fruits.