Researchers have recently launched Talkie, a 13B model trained exclusively on a corpus of texts published before 1931. This represents an effort to create an AI with the 'mindset' and language of the past.
Background
Most current LLMs are trained on modern Internet data, leaving them saturated with 21st-century concepts and linguistic styles. Talkie bucks this trend by restricting its dataset to the pre-digital era.
Why It Matters
This project helps answer the question: Can a model with no knowledge of computers or the internet learn modern logical concepts (such as coding) if instructed? This serves as an important test of artificial intelligence's generalization capabilities, while also opening up new pathways for educational applications and historical research.