Article: The unreasonable effectiveness of AI

This is a good summary of the high level steps in reaching the currently level of LLM abilities.

How did we reach this point? Back in 2018, when I started working in the field, it would usually take us weeks to properly run a serious end-to-end machine learning modelling experiment. A few years later, when we were experimenting with neural network architectures, we would strain our eyes for hours to properly compile a model by reading the framework’s docs and searching online.

With these thoughts in mind, I wanted to write this article as a sort-of-homage to the last decade. From 2017 until today - summer of 2026 - one can easily highlight six pivotal moments in AI research and development.

It all starts with attention.

https://artisanml.substack.com/p/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of