Yi Tay: AI progress is driven by compounding small incremental changes
Yi Tay · Captaining IMO Gold, Deep Think, On-Policy RL, Feeling the AGI in Singapore — Yi Tay · Jan 23, 2026 · at 43:54
Google DeepMind research scientist Yi Tay discusses whether frontier AI breakthroughs stem from single architectural leaps or compounding incremental data improvements.
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“I think that it's true that sometimes a lot of progress on the whole is just a series of small incremental changes that, yeah, that push. I think that's accurate. That's true. There's also, it also feels that there's also a lot of like small, like seemingly minor for the lack of better word, like that push AI to the state where it is today.”
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