GPT-3 and A Typology of Hype

What's in this issue: Here, I try to deconstruct the buzz about GPT-3, and in trying to do that, I dig deeper into what hype means in the context of emergent technologies and how to integrate the noise out while consuming new science on social media. Read the rest of the post for a framework to think about the buzz in breakthrough technologies while living in the midst of it. GPT-3 or similar models did not assist in any of this writing. If you're reading this over email, it might be best to read it directly on substack as some email clients clip long emails and block images used as illustration. If you are a new visitor for the Page Street Labs newsletter, check out our hello world post explaining what this newsletter is about and why we exist. Words have no "grounded" meanings unless you also take the full context of the reader and the writer, and yet we use words to get to that wordless essence with strangers we will never know. This was in full display when GPT-3 went viral, at least in Tech Twitter, over last weekend. Many researchers, including myself, used the words "GPT-3" and "hype" in the same Tweet to contain people's expectations.