So, the paper title is “Language Models are Few-Shot Learners” and this commenter’s suggested “more conservative interpretation” is “Lots of NLP Tasks are Learned in the Course of Language Modeling and can be Queried by Example.” Now, I agree that version states the thesis more clearly, but it’s pretty much saying the same thing. It’s a claim about properties fundamental to language models, not about this specific model. I can’t fully evaluate whether the authors have enough evidence to back that claim up but it’s an interesting and plausible idea, and I don’t think the framing is irresponsible if they really believe it’s true.
HN comment unsure about the meta-learning generalization claims that OpenAI has a “serious duty [...] to frame their results more carefully”
So, the paper title is “Language Models are Few-Shot Learners” and this commenter’s suggested “more conservative interpretation” is “Lots of NLP Tasks are Learned in the Course of Language Modeling and can be Queried by Example.” Now, I agree that version states the thesis more clearly, but it’s pretty much saying the same thing. It’s a claim about properties fundamental to language models, not about this specific model. I can’t fully evaluate whether the authors have enough evidence to back that claim up but it’s an interesting and plausible idea, and I don’t think the framing is irresponsible if they really believe it’s true.