[throw1235435]

If we had done what you say (distribute wealth more evenly between people/corporations) more to the point I don't know if AI would of progressed as it has - companies would of been more selective with their investment money and previously AI was seen at best as a long shot bet. Most companies in the "real economy" can't afford to make too many of these kind of bets in general.

The main reason for the transformer architecture, and many other AI advancements really was "big tech" has lots of cash that they don't know what to do with. It seems the US system punishes dividends as well tax wise; so companies are incentivized to become like VC's -> buy lots of opportunities hoping one makes it big even if many end up losing.

[benlivengood]

Transformers grew out of the value-add side (autotranslation), though, not really the ad business side iirc. Value-add work still gets done in high-progressive-tax societies if it's valuable to a large fraction of people. Research into luxury goods is slowed by progressive tax rates, but the actual border between consumer and luxury goods actually rises a bit with redistributed wealth; more people can afford smartphones earlier and almost no one buys superyachts and so reinvestment into general technology research may actually be higher.

[wpm]

And I'm sure none of it was based on any public research from public universities, or private universities that got public grants.

[throw1235435]

Sure. I just know in most companies (seeing the numbers on projects in a number of them across industries now) funding projects which give time for people to think, ponder, publish white papers of new techniques is rare and economically not justifiable against other investments.

Put it this way - to have a project where people have the luxury to scratch their heads for awhile and to bet on something that may not actually be possible yet is something most companies can't justify to finance. Listening to the story of the transformer invention it sounds like one of these projects to me.

They may stand on the shoulders of giants that is true (at the very least they were trained in these institutions) but putting it together as it was - that was done in a commercial setting with shareholder funds.

In addition given the disruption to Google in general LLM's have done I would say, despite Gemini, it may of been better cost/benefit wise for Google NOT to invent the transformer architecture at all/yet or at least not publish a white paper for the world to see. As a use of shareholders funds the activity above probably isn't a wise one.