Photo by Artem Podrez on Pexels

A visualization charting the evolutionary lineage of encoder, decoder, and encoder-decoder AI models, posted by Yann LeCun on X (formerly Twitter), has ignited a discussion on the often perplexing terminology used within the field. The graphic, prompting a lively debate on Reddit’s r/artificial intelligence (accessible at https://old.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1mjrq03/evolution_tree_of_encoder_decoder_encoderdecoder/), aims to clarify the relationships between these fundamental architectures.