Intelligence Archive
Attention Changed Everything
One architecture. Many tasks. The conceptual jump from a specialist machine to a foundation model.
In 2017, a Google research paper introduced the transformer: a network based on attention, without recurrence.
Attention Is All You Need (arXiv)
Attention is a useful metaphor: the model learns which tokens in a sequence matter for the next prediction. This is a teaching sketch, not a running neural net.
Buyer question
Gold intensity is a teaching weight, not a measured attention head.
That architecture is the lineage behind GPT, Gemini, Claude, Llama and many others. One model, many tasks — Tier IV in the AIB map.
AIB Classification: These tiers are an educational framework created by AIB to explain changes in AI capabilities. They are not an industry-standard classification and eras overlap.
Citations are ordinary editorial links to primary sources. They are not partnerships, sponsorships, or endorsements.
What does AI know about your organization?
History explains the ecosystem. An investigation shows where you sit inside it.