Machine Learning's Obsession with Kids' TV Show Characters

What do they have in common? They're all beloved fictional characters from TV shows many of us watched when we were young. In 2018, researchers at the Allen Institute published the language model ELMo. The lead author, Matt Peters, said the team brainstormed many acronyms for their model, and ELMo instantly stuck as a "whimsical but memorable" choice. What started out as an inside joke has become a full-blown trend.