ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
May 2020
GPT-3 and scaling
A 175-billion-parameter language model can do new tasks from a few examples in the prompt.
OpenAI researchers
Why it matters
Showed that bigger models trained on more text gain new abilities.
NINE WORLDS · ONE THREAD
PAST / PRESENTMap of time.
200 moments across the worlds of Polykrom.
CONNECTED
200 MOMENTS160 YEARS
Dates follow each timeline’s year label. Approximate dates and ranges remain on the original moments.
AT THIS POINT IN TIME
2020 CE
4 moments
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Nov 2020
AlphaFold 2
Predicts protein shapes with near-lab accuracy at the CASP14 competition.
Demis Hassabis · John Jumper
Why it matters
Won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
WORLD HISTORY
11 Mar 2020
COVID-19 pandemic declared
The WHO declares a pandemic; lockdowns reshape school, work and travel worldwide.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Why it matters
Showed how connected — and fragile — the modern world is.
SCIENCE
Dec 2020 (first approvals)
mRNA vaccines
COVID-19 vaccines are developed in under a year.
Katalin Karikó · Drew Weissman
Why it matters
Decades of quiet research paid off fast.