I don't think test scores have anything to do with the hype. Most people don't even realize test scores exist.
One is just to wow factor. It will be short lived. A bit like VR, which is awesome when you first try it, but it wears out quickly. Here, you can have a bot write convincing stories and generate nice looking images, which is awesome until you notice that the story doesn't make sense and that the images has many details wrong. This is not just a score, it is something you can see and experience.
And there is also the real thing. People start using GPT for real work. I have used it to document my code for instance, and it works really well, with it I can do a better job than without, and I can do it faster. Many students use it to do their homework, which may not be something you want, but it no less of a real use. Many artists are strongly protesting against generative AI, this in itself is telling, it means it is taken seriously, and at the same time, other artists are making use of it.
It is even use for great effect where you don't notice. Phone cameras are a good example, by enhancing details using AI, they give you much better pictures than what the optics are capable of. Some people don't like that because the picture are "not real", but most enjoy the better perceived quality. Then, there are image classifiers, speech-to-text and OCR, fuzzy searching, content ranking algorithms we love to hate, etc... that all make use of AI.
Note: here AI = machine learning with neural networks, which is what the hype is about. AI is a vague term that can mean just about anything.
> I don't think test scores have anything to do with the hype. Most people don't even realize test scores exist.
They put the test scores front and center in the initial announcement with a huge image showing improvements on AP exams, it was the main thing people talked about during the announcement and the first thing anyone who read anything about gpt-4 sees.
I don't think many who are hyped about these things missed that.
It is what they talk about during announcements because people like numbers. It looks more serious than "hey look, GPT-4 smart" with some example quotes that anyone knows are cherry picked. But the real hype comes from people trying for themselves.
I seriously don't remember hearing these test results being mentioned in any casual conversation, and I heard a lot of casual conversations about AI. The majority of these center around personal experiences ("I asked ChatGPT this and I got that..."), homework is another common topic. When we compare systems, we won't say "this one got a 72 and the other got a 94", but more like "I asked new system to give me a specific piece of code (or cocktail recipe, or anything) and the result is much better". Again, personal experience and anecdotes before scores.
Maybe people in the field hype themselves with score, but not the general public, and probably not the investors either, who will most likely look at the financial performance of the likes of OpenAI instead.
If you followed the initial announcement, then you were presumably already hyped. The novel thing about chatgpt has been the mass amount of people who hadn't heard about generative AI in the past glomming onto the technology. Most of these people heard about it via word of mouth. They then tried it themselves and told people about it. They never even heard of tests, let alone based their perception on them.
One is just to wow factor. It will be short lived. A bit like VR, which is awesome when you first try it, but it wears out quickly. Here, you can have a bot write convincing stories and generate nice looking images, which is awesome until you notice that the story doesn't make sense and that the images has many details wrong. This is not just a score, it is something you can see and experience.
And there is also the real thing. People start using GPT for real work. I have used it to document my code for instance, and it works really well, with it I can do a better job than without, and I can do it faster. Many students use it to do their homework, which may not be something you want, but it no less of a real use. Many artists are strongly protesting against generative AI, this in itself is telling, it means it is taken seriously, and at the same time, other artists are making use of it.
It is even use for great effect where you don't notice. Phone cameras are a good example, by enhancing details using AI, they give you much better pictures than what the optics are capable of. Some people don't like that because the picture are "not real", but most enjoy the better perceived quality. Then, there are image classifiers, speech-to-text and OCR, fuzzy searching, content ranking algorithms we love to hate, etc... that all make use of AI.
Note: here AI = machine learning with neural networks, which is what the hype is about. AI is a vague term that can mean just about anything.