ESPN deployed a GPT-3 database query system in production in September 2021
Vishal Misra · Why Scale Will Not Solve AGI | Vishal Misra - The a16z Show · Mar 17, 2026 · at 1:55
Columbia University Professor Vishal Misra details deploying an early GPT-3 natural language database querying architecture into production at ESPN.
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“We deployed this In production at ESPN in September, 21.”
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More from Vishal Misra
Misra: Current LLM architectures cannot recursively self-improve into new paradigms
“That kind of self-improvement is not possible with these architectures. They can refine these. They can fill out these rows where the answer already exists.”
Misra: LLMs are just silicon doing matrix multiplication, not conscious beings
“You can rule out they're conscious. I mean, come on. And I said, you know, Anthropic makes great products. Cloud code is fantastic. Co-work is fantastic, but they are grains of silicon doing matrix multiplication. They don't have consciousness. They don't have…”
Misra: Scale will not solve everything; AGI requires a different architecture
“One of the misconceptions that exists today is that scale will solve everything. Scale will not solve everything. You need a different kind of architecture, and this continual learning is a difficult problem.”
Misra: AGI requires generating new science beyond training data
“AGI will be when we are able to create new science, new results, new math. When an AGI comes up with a theory of relativity, it has to go beyond what it has been trained on. To come up with new paradigms, new science. That's my definition of AGI.”