[bigbillheck]

> A time traveller from even 20 years ago would have a hard time making sense of the three sentences in the (75-page-long!) GPT-3 paper that describe the actual software that was built for the model

First off, the only one of those three sentences that a 2002 researcher would be stumped by is the first, and that solely due to the unfamiliar nouns. The other two sentences are perfectly classical, and the only difficulty one of the ancients would have is putting their eyes back in after they popped out on seeing the model sizes.

Second, isn't that good? It means the field has advanced, and there are new concepts being used, which I'd have thought is exactly what we want.

Third, how different is this than the past? Would a time traveller from 1982 be equally stymied by a paper from 2002? How about 1962 to 1982?