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February 7, 2023 AI

Understanding GPT-2 vs GPT-3

Understanding GPT-2 vs GPT-3

GPT-2 was considered too dangerous to release in full when it launched in 2019. GPT-3 shattered those concerns by demonstrating that scale brought capability far beyond simple text generation.

Parameter Count

  • GPT-2: 1.5 billion parameters
  • GPT-3: 175 billion parameters — over 100x larger

    • What Scale Unlocked

    GPT-3 demonstrated emergent abilities not present in GPT-2: few-shot learning, code generation, and coherent long-form reasoning. This validated the scaling hypothesis and set the direction for the entire field.