Comment by advael
The most ridiculous aspects for me were the anthropomorphizing (Reminds me of that one Sam Altman interview a bit) and the use of "infinite", which both doesn't really work on vibes (as many have noted, while I'm sure chatGPT has been exposed to every word, its pattern of communication is very "regression to the mean" among them), but also is silly if taken literally, because unless we're counting like some quirky technically-grammatical combinatoric compounding that we in practice infer the meaning of from composition of what we identify as separate individual words (like just hyphenating a bunch of adjectives and a noun or something) there's not really an argument for there being "infinite vocabulary" in the same sense that there is for "infinite possible sentences" because being a valid word requires at least that someone can meaningfully comprehend what is meant by it, and coordination requirements of this nature tend to truncate infinities
The case for ChatGPT doing significant coinage that sticks isn't particularly strong either, partially from theory and partially because I'd think I'd've heard a lot of complaints about it by now, and the ones on hackernews would be repetitive to the point of seeming unavoidable (we agree on that for sure)
Anyway, re: the silliest hype I've heard all week, I'm mostly just trying to find humor in what has been a pretty bad hype wave for someone who's pathologically bad at sounding like the kind of nontechnical hype guys that pervade any tech hype wave but is nonetheless mostly seeking out jobs in this field because it's what my expertise is in. Incredibly awful job market for a lot of people I realize, but it feels like a special hell I get for getting into ML research before it was (quite so) cool. I'm trying to fight the negativity but I've gotten screwed over a lot lately, but I don't have anything against you personally for being silly on hn
Ah ok so anthropomorphizing and the phrase "infinite vocabulary" sounds impossible. I agree infinite vocabulary is a bit murky, and mathematically incorrect. If I wanted to be more mathematically correct I could say complete vocabulary, but I think that's actually a little less understandable to people. I did not mean infinite vocabulary in that it coins new words, just infinite as in very large to the point of being incomprehensibly large by a single individual. As per anthropomorphizing, I think the word "chat" is the most anthropomorphizing I did, so don't agree with you on that one.
Ah mate sorry to hear that, the market is tough right now. I will say objectively I believe there's very little in my comment that's hype-y. I think using AI while reading documents out of your comfort zone, and asking it questions can expand your vocabulary. I've personally tried it, it's helped me read papers not in my field, it's helped me find papers for better research. I can understand how someone can disagree with that, but calling it hype sounds to me more like a response to an invisible enemy/to "all the ones who hyped before" than to an actual concrete response to this specific case. And I think that mentality could put you in a potential catch-22 mental loop that will leave you constantly dissatisfied with anything AI or ML, by constantly seeing this invisible enemy where it might not be present. Anyways, stay positive and best of luck with the job hunt!
Edit: and it looks like my comment has now fallen deep into the depths of the comment thread, never to be heard from again! See, I told you I was an embattled ideological minority ;)