Why are so many AI systems named after Muppets?
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/11/20993407/ai-language-models-muppets-sesame-street-muppetware-elmo-bert-ernie
Reported today in The Verge.
Why are so many AI systems named after Muppets?
One of the biggest trends in AI recently has been the creation of machine learning models that can generate the written word with unprecedented fluidity. These programs are game-changers, potentially supercharging computers' ability to parse and produce language.
But something that's gone largely unnoticed is a secondary trend - a shadow to the first - and that is: a surprising number of these tools are named after Muppets.
To date, this new breed of language AIs includes an ELMo, a BERT, a Grover, a Big BIRD, a Rosita, a RoBERTa, at least two ERNIEs (three if you include ERNIE 2.0), and a KERMIT. Big tech players like Google, Facebook, and the Allen Institute for AI are all involved, and the craze has global reach, with Chinese search giant Baidu and Beijing's Tsinghua University contributing models. The naming convention is so well established that these systems are sometimes referred to as "Muppetware." But who started the convention and why?
As you might have guessed, the simple answer is: it's an inside joke, with researchers naming AI models after Muppets because other researchers have named AI models after Muppets. But it's a joke that happens to highlight a particular characteristic of AI research, demonstrating how labs pay homage to and build upon one another's work.
2018: Language model papers have to introduce Sesame Street-related acronyms2019: Language model papers need Sesame Street jokes in the title, all talks need at least one Sesame Street image.2020: ACL/NAACL co-located with Sesame Street convention, Big Bird gives a keynote.
The trend started with ELMo, a model devised by the Allen Institute and first published online in October 2017. As is often the case with researc