Musk reposted a self-deprecating "AI then / AI now" chart and added just one word: "Accurate 😂."
The old days of machine learning meant designing kernel methods, proving why a model actually worked, and building careful probabilistic frameworks. Now, in the large-model era, the playbook has basically shrunk to three steps: make the Transformer bigger, feed it more data, add more GPUs — and the model somehow gets stronger again.
That's the awkward reality of today's LLM industry: we used to figure out the principles first, then design the model. Now we usually scale first, and worry about why the capabilities showed up later.
Musk shared the meme on X.