You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

Do you know what the GPT in chat GPT stands for?

I admit I didn't,

and it's an acronym for generative,

pre-trained transformer.

Today, we have a talk from one of the main architects

of those very transformers that have changed our world.

AI researcher Leon Jones.

He wonders if today's AI boom may actually be holding the field back, challenging researchers,

companies, and investors to turn down competitive optimization in order to turn up open exploration

so we can discover the next great leap in AI.

I'm probably most well known as one of the Transformers authors.

Transformers are, of course, the T in ChurchEBT, and are the architectures that run most of the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence.

If I think back to that time when we were working on the Transformers,

I remember it as a very organic, bottom-up kind of project, where the idea came from talking over lunch

or scribbling randomly on the whiteboards in the office.

And importantly, when we felt like we did actually have a good idea,

we had the freedom to actually spend the time and go and work on it.

And even more importantly, we didn't have any pressure that was coming down from management.

No pressure to work on any particular project,

publish a number of papers,

...