Is AI progress slowing down?

Timeline of AI model releases in 2024 VB assembled this detailed timeline of every significant AI model release in 2024, for both API and open weight models. I'd hoped to include something like this in my 2024 review - I'm glad I didn't bother, because VB's is way better than anything I had planned. VB built it with assistance from DeepSeek v3,...

A lot has happened in the world of Large Language Models over the course of 2024. Here's a review of things we figured out about the field in the past twelve months, plus my attempt at identifying key themes and pivotal moments. This is a sequel to my review of 2023. In this article: The GPT-4 barrier was comprehensively broken Some of those...

Basically, a frontier model like OpenAI’s O1 is like a Ferrari SF-23. It’s an obvious triumph of engineering, designed to win races, and that’s why we talk about it. But it takes a special pit crew just to change the tires and you can’t buy one for yourself. In contrast, a BERT model is like a Honda Civic. It’s also an engineering triumph, but...

Severance on FanFare I'm coordinating a rewatch of season one of Severance on MetaFilter Fanfare in preparation for season two (due to start on January 17th). I'm posting an episode every three days - we are up to episode 5 so far (excellently titled "The Grim Barbarics of Optics and Design"). Severance is a show that rewatches really well. There...

How we think about Threads’ iOS performance This article by Dave LaMacchia and Jason Patterson provides an incredibly deep insight into what effective performance engineering looks like for an app with 100s of millions of users. I always like hearing about custom performance metrics with their own acronyms. Here we are introduced to %FIRE - the...