Share one research paper on LLMs that you believe ...
Created on: July 5, 2025
Question
Share one research paper on LLMs that you believe every AI engineer should read.
Share the link, and a short reason why you recommend it.
Thought
Answer
Paper
Language Models are Few-Shot Learners – Tom B. Brown et al., 2020
https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165
Why every AI engineer should read it
This is the paper that unveiled GPT-3 and, more broadly, proved that sheer scale plus a simple Transformer architecture can turn a pre-trained model into a competent “in-context learner.” By showing that a model given just a handful of examples—or only a natural-language instruction—can match or beat task-specific fine-tuning, it:
- shifted the community from data-hungry fine-tuning to prompt engineering;
- inspired today’s research on emergent abilities, chain-of-thought reasoning, and safety;
- established the practical and economic importance of scaling laws that still guide LLM design.
In short, it’s the cornerstone for understanding both how modern LLMs work and why prompt-based workflows dominate current AI practice. arxiv.org