They certainly were not late to AI, unless you narrowly define AI as “LLMs”. See [1] as a single example among many.
[1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1609/aimag.v19i1.1355
Given the context of this conversation, one would naturally assume we are talking about commercial public-facing LLMs and not AI as a field.
Given the context of this conversation, one would naturally assume we are talking about commercial public-facing LLMs and not AI as a field.