From your reaction I guess you were expecting a talk about a NeurIPS 2024 paper.
This is a different situation. There's the "NeurIPS 2024 Test of Time Paper Awards" where they award a historical paper. In this case, a paper from 2014 was awarded and his talk is about that and why it passed the test of time.
I am also disappointed, and I have not missed the context. The talk is empty for anyone who follows the field for more than two years, and especially for those who are familiar with his 2014 paper. Yes, he had amazing insight and intuition behind modern LLM breakthroughs, and yes, he probably earned the right to sound "prophetic", but he could have provided some interesting personal anecdotes about how the paper was written, or some fresh ideas in "What Comes Next" section of his presentation.
This is a different situation. There's the "NeurIPS 2024 Test of Time Paper Awards" where they award a historical paper. In this case, a paper from 2014 was awarded and his talk is about that and why it passed the test of time.
https://blog.neurips.cc/2024/11/27/announcing-the-neurips-20...
The title chosen for the HN submission leaves out that important context. So that's why you are disappointed now.