#small language models

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A long steel archive shelf of dated aluminium specimen trays with one tray, carrying a small phone-class circuit module, caught mid-slide into the last open bay, a cork timeline wall of pinned paper title cards receding behind it

A History of Small and On-Device AI

Before a phone could run a language model, it had to run anything at all: a narrower convolution, a dedicated chip, an always-listening detector, and a trick for compressing what a bigger model already knew. This is that decade, in order.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 12, 2026 · 16 min read

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