Basics
Large language model
A program that learned to use language by reading enormous amounts of text.
A large language model, often shortened to LLM, is the engine behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude. It learned patterns of language by reading a huge slice of the internet, books, and articles, and it uses those patterns to predict what words should come next. It does not look things up in a database. It generates each answer on the spot, one piece at a time, based on everything it absorbed during training.
For example
When you ask a chatbot to write a birthday poem, a large language model is what strings the words together.
Related
TokenThe small chunk of text an AI reads and writes, often part of a word.Context windowHow much text an AI can keep in mind at one time.ParametersThe internal dials a model adjusts while learning, numbering in the billions.Training vs inferenceTraining is teaching the model once; inference is using it every day.