> scaling to 1T parameters significantly enhances sample efficiency and performance ceilings;

Man, I find SOTA deep learning somewhat hilarious. We scale models to absurd proportions, burning through a shitload of resources just to achieve (slightly above) human intelligence. The human brain has a few billion neurons and uses as much power as a light bulb.

The human brain is estimated to have approaching 10^11 neurons (most of them in the cerebellum).

However, a neuron is much more than a single parameter. The brain is estimated to have from 10^14 to 5x10^14 synapses.

When for the training part you have to consider brains had like billions of years to develop. Maybe one of the reasons llms seem to be so expensive to train is because we are "compressing" in far less time that learning part

This is the worst they will ever be.

In 1956 a 5mb hard drive shipped on a large truck and took a team of men to unload. It consumed huge amounts of power, and cost about $3,200/month to run. In today's dollars that would be about $160,000 per month.

Aren't you glad we didnt just give up because it was kind of expensive?

Similarly, all the components in an audio amplifier are super dumb because you can just have 4 guys play in your living room amirite

Do you find cars similarly hilarious?

everything in LLM world is that right now.

the active layers concept seems to be experiencing convergent evolution to how synapses in a human function

huge parameter models with many small but efficient layers can work quickly on low resource hardware

similar to how neurons experience chemical spiking to activate small portions of the brain at once