Overall, I agree - the progress of AI has been breakneck over the past 12 months. But the difference in quality of Talk-to-Transformer and GPT-4 hasn't been that much in my experience. Both produce seemingly-correct text that crumbles under scrutiny and becomes useless for anything with a sub-80% acceptable failure rate.

It's great stuff, and I'd be lying if I said I liked cryptocurrency and don't use AI. The parallels are starkly visible though, and the "overpromise/underdeliver" cycle is already much further along than cryptocurrency ever got. The bubble will eventually pop because people are dissatisfied with the pace of progress, and then everyone will look for a scapegoat. We're already halfway there, judging by the daily deluge of "Ask HN: Why Does It Feel Like OpenAI Nerfed ChatGPT?" posts.

Crypto promised to replace the dollar, mortgages, ID systems, etc... It's had ten years to do so and still has little to show. ChatGPT was released a few months ago and has hundreds of millions of users. I use it every day for work.