> This is interesting with the recent work showing that models using different architectures, but the same dataset converge to similar capabilities. It makes the case that the data set itself and the compute over it is the secret sauce for these models.
Yes, I go as far as putting 99% the merit on the dataset, given a compute budget. Humans with similar cultural exposure are also remarkably close in intelligence, even though brains are very different at micro level.
If language data is actually the source of most of our acquired intelligence, if intelligence is a collective process, if it has an evolutionary drive, then isn't it silly to discuss so much about models or brains while forgetting about its crystallized form - language and text.
It is a repository of past experience spanning millennia, and a self replication medium for ideas. All our important knowledge is encoded in language. We (and more recently LLMs) draw heavily on this recorded experience. It cost a lot to be earned in the first place. If we lost all this knowledge, it would take us millennia to recover. It's smarter than all of us.