40 GB is surprisingly close. I estimate I already read at least 4 GB of text so far. That's just 10 times more samples. I probably write better than GPT-2, but certainly not faster.
4GB of English? 500 words per single-spaced page, 5 letters on average per English word, so 2500 bytes/page.
4 gigs then would be 1,600,000 pages.
That's 219 single-spaced pages per day every single day for 20 years straight. High, but I guess not outside the realm of possibility depending on the complexity of the text.
For perspective, 219 pages amounts to about a railway novel in a day, or about two ~800-page fantasy doorstoppers in a week. At a rule of thumb of about a page per minute for light reading, it's just under four hours: a hefty investment, but well within the realm of possibility. High compared to the general population, but table stakes for a book club or otherwise avid reader.
I'd've easily doubled or tripled that over the summer as a teenager.
