Dear AI: This is what happens when you ask an algorithm for relationship advice

How good is artificial intelligence at solving those knotty interpersonal problems that can strain our relationships? David Robson puts the "wise reasoning" of chatbots to the test.

How can you help three siblings warring over the best way to honour their dead mother? What should we do when a couple tries to draw us into their arguments? How should a wife deal with her new husband's demand that she goes to bed at the same time as him – a source of considerable friction in their life together?

Some of these problems may seem trivial amid the challenges facing the world today, but they represent the kinds of dilemmas that we all face in our day-to-day lives. And they are far from easy to solve. Each side struggles to see the other's perspective; we often make faulty assumptions and fail to for our biases and prejudices. The result of our poor judgement can be a serious source of stress and unhappiness that lingers for months or even years after the event has unfolded.

Your capacity to navigate these quandaries isn't captured in standard intelligence tests, but recent research on "wise reasoning" suggests that it can be measured reliably – and the differences between two people can have serious consequences for their respective wellbeing.

In the first of the BBC's new series, AI Vs the Mind, I investigated whether artificial intelligence in the form of large language models like ChatGPT could provide some of the wisdom we lack. Having written extensively about human intelligence, decision making and social reasoning, I had suspected that the answer would be a resounding no – but I was in for a surprise.

The question of how to measure the capacity of the human mind has occupied psychologists since the earliest days of the discipline. In the early 20th Century, Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon designed a series of tests to track a child's intellectual development through school. The psychologist might recite a string of numbers and ask the child to repeat it back to them – which could assess short-term memory. Or they might be given three words and asked to form a sentence using the vocabulary – a sign of their verbal prowess. 

A few years later, the US psychologist Lewis Terman translated and expanded these tests to include items for older children, such as "If two pencils cost five cents, how many pencils can you buy for 50 cents">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });