Have you been following NLP closely lately? It seems like most of the frustration and/or skepticism is coming from those closest to the field (i.e. researchers)

Have you been following NLP closely lately? It seems like most of the frustration and/or skepticism is coming from those closest to the field (i.e. researchers), so I'm pretty sure I'm missing a big part of the picture. I'm trying to get a sense of just how quickly things have been advancing. I read a few NLP white papers about a year ago and never saw anything as compelling as this, but I am definitely an outsider possibly on the left hand side of the Dunning Kruger graph...