Tracing the Evolution of Language Models: From the 20th Century Legacy to Modern Transformers

Language models have been at the forefront of AI development for over 75 years, paving the way for today's transformers and beyond. In the 1990s, IBM's alignment models significantly improved performance, leading the way in natural language processing (NLP) before today's popular 'LLMs' or large language models became the center of attention. The internet boom of the 2000s then facilitated the use of 'web as corpus' datasets, further propelling statistical models to dominance in NLP. Although current models like transformers are hailed as cutting-edge, they stand on the shoulders of giants from preceding decades. For further insights, visit Data Science Central.