"predicting the next word" sounds trivial until you realize the value and complexity of "predicting the next word[s] by a world leading expert in a particular domain".

Quoting famous people sounds smart until you realize they just memorized a ton of trivia. These models have demonstrated that they don't learn logical models, instead they learn to generate text that looks logical at first glance but is nonsense.

I asked GPT-4 something fairly niche that I happen to know a fair amount about: to explain the concept of Xenon poisoning in a nuclear reactor. Other than skipping Te-135 being the initial fission product that starts the decay chain (and tbf, operationally it can be skipped since the half-life is 19 seconds), it got everything correct.

I'm sure if I kept probing on smaller and smaller details it would eventually fail, but I'd argue for _most_ people, on _most_ subjects, it performs incredibly well.

I couldn't get ChatGPT to do Wordle. I don't have access to GPT-4. See if it can do that.

Ok, but it has all this information already. So why is this surprising.

A real test of it's abilities would be synthesizing a NEW type of nuclear reactor.