I would honestly just suggest you spend some time interacting with it when you get a chance. Yes it still spews nonsense and no there isn't understanding, but it is qualitatively better than GPT-2 and has somewhat remarkable range. The hype is more about the potential rather than the capability.
There is genuine understanding! What there isn't is wide-range coherence, which is not the same thing. The system can clearly generalize patterns, it just has no reliable concept of sticking to them.
