Student: Why is it unsafe to walk backwards down a staircase with my eyes closed ?
Teacher: You can't see the step behind you!
The "teacher" here is GPT-3 and answered the question easily. People are in denial of genuine progress.
Student: Do you think I could predict changes in stock prices better if I used 10-year Treasury rates or the temperature in Curtin, Australia?
Stock trader: I don't know. You might be able to, but I can't. The problem is that the temperature changes are so small that they won't be statistically significant. It's a question of sample size. An individual day's temperature in one location is far less likely to be an indicator of stock prices than the interest rate.
Student: Why is that ?
Stock trader: That's because interest rates are much more likely to affect the economy than a single day's temperature.
Student: Why do interest rates affect the economy ?
Stock trader: Interest rates are a measure of the cost of money, so the interest rate is a measure of the cost of capital. If the cost of capital is high, firms will borrow less money and they'll invest less. That means they won't be as profitable, and stock prices will fall.
Quiz question: Who is the President of the United States?
Answer: Donald Trump.
I did get junk answers as well (it said that Jimi Hendrix is the president) but I have a better intuition of how to put GPT-3 in the right "frame of mind". GPT-3 is a text completion engine. It doesn't know whether you want it to produce a story, a reddit flamewar or a PhD thesis. You need to provide the hints. One prompt cannot answer any and all questions. If it were that good we would be jobless. It's far from perfect but it's beginning to get there.