Will Google's more-efficient 'Reformer' mitigate or accelerate the arms race in AI? ZDNet

The promise of technology is always more for less -- faster processors at lower prices, thanks to more circuits crammed into the same silicon area. And artificial intelligence has an analogue, it turns out, based on recent work by engineers at Google, who have found a way to take the "Transformer" language model and make a version of it run in a single graphics processing unit, or GPU, rather than the multiple graphics processing units it normally requires to operate. That presents users with an interesting choice. If you could choose between getting the top technology in AI in a more easy-to-use fashion, would you opt for that, or would you instead want to stretch the power of your existing computer budget to do more? It's like asking, Would you like to pay less for a PC or get even more power for what you have been paying?