For a more informed opinion than folks on the internet, here's some work from Microsoft with early/internal access to gpt4: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712 . I don't think people close by these systems share the same dumb parrot sentiment at all.
I've never been sure what to make of that paper. It was published by Microsoft shortly after Microsoft's big deal with OpenAI and reads a lot like a marketing piece to me. Many of the observations didn't reproduce the same way once ChatGPT4 in public hands too. If nothing else, I'd prefer it come from a party who hadn't just signed a $13 billion dollar deal with OpenAI a few weeks prior with a view to using their products to sell more new products/features... It's somewhat self-serving for Microsoft to argue ChatGPT4 is super-awesome/sparks of AGI etc, regardless of validity of claims.
