Explainer: What's R1 & Everything Else?

it is nice to see someone lay out clearly that reinforcement learning continues to be the driver of progress.

while LLM improvement seems to be slowing down, innovation on making them cheaper to build, deploy and run is worthy progress in of itself

This article explains the recent developments in AI, focusing on reasoning models like R1, O1, and O3. It clarifies the differences between reasoning models and AI agents, discusses the importance of cheap reasoning, and explores the significance of R1 as an open-source alternative. The article also delves into scaling laws, reinforcement learning, model distillation, and geopolitical implications of AI advancements.