Even on a technical level, these chatbots are using reinforcement learning on the fly to dynamically tune their output... They're not just GPT, they're GPT + live input from users and the search engine.
As for the GPT part, where did the training data come from? Who generated it? Who curated it? Who preconditioned it? How was it weighted? Who set the hyperparameters? Who had the conversations about what's working and what needs to change? Those were people and all their actions went into the "end result", which is much more complex than you're making it out to be.
You are applying your categorical thinking when you talk about "it". Drawing a neat little box around the program, as though it was a well written node module. What I'm telling you is that not everyone is referring to the same thing as you when they talk about this. If you want to understand what all these people mean you're going to have to shift your perspective to more of a "systems thinking" point of view or something like that.
It’s self defining; whatever people are saying here, I’m saying those comments are overblown. What “it” is I leave up to whoever is doomsaying, as there is no version of “it” that’s worth doomsaying over.
Don’t you think the burden of proof lies with those that think this is something more than a just a dumb statistical model?
And that is truly terrifying. That's the gist of what we're all trying to say. Everyone else seems to be going "Bah! How stupid to think that this is anything more than pattern recognition and prediction!"
The same phrase could be used to describe a human. We're just trying to say "we don't know what this technology is, and we don't know what it can do". Anyone saying "it's clearly just a tool!" is being dangerously arrogant.