The AI revolution is about to spread way beyond chatbots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From new plastic-eating bacteria and new cancer cures to autonomous helper robots and self-driving cars, the generative-AI technology that gained prominence as the engine of ChatGPT is poised to change our lives in ways that make talking bots look like mere distractions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While we tend to equate the current artificial-intelligence boom with computers that can write, talk, code and make pictures, most of those forms of expression are built on an underlying technology called a \u201ctransformer\u201d that has far broader applications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First announced in\u00a0a 2017 paper<\/a>\u00a0from Google researchers, transformers are a kind of AI algorithm that lets computers understand the underlying structure of any heap of data\u2014be it words, driving data, or the amino acids in a protein\u2014so that it can generate its own similar output.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The transformer paved the way for OpenAI to launch ChatGPT two years ago, and a range of companies are now working on how to use the innovation in new ways, from Waymo and its robot taxis<\/a> to a biology startup called EvolutionaryScale, whose AI systems are designing new protein molecules. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The applications of this breakthrough are so broad that in the seven years since the Google research was published, it has been cited<\/a> in other scientific papers more than 140,000 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> This is a great article by @mims<\/a> about how transformers, the key innovation powering LLMs like ChatGPT, are poised to transform robotics and other fields.https:\/\/t.co\/4v3wqyUj95<\/a><\/p>— Erik Brynjolfsson (@erikbryn) November 18, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>