
In 2023, artificial intelligence burst into the mainstream. The decades-old discipline had been advancing quickly in recent years, steadily improving the ability of computers to spot patterns in large data sets, and even predict them.
These huge strides, resulting from an explosion of data online, alongside more powerful computer hardware and algorithms, culminated in the invention of the large language model, or LLM: software that can write plausible sophisticated text, and generate images and computer code that imitate human ability. The LLM itself isn’t brand new but it underpins ChatGPT, the AI chatbot that took the world by storm just over a year ago.