Basics
Token
The small chunk of text an AI reads and writes, often part of a word.
AI models do not see whole words the way we do. They break text into little pieces called tokens, which can be a short word, part of a longer word, or even a single punctuation mark. Everything the model reads and everything it writes is counted in tokens, so tokens are the basic unit of an AI's attention and, usually, of its cost.
For example
The word 'unbelievable' might be split into three tokens: 'un', 'believ', and 'able'.
Related
Large language modelA program that learned to use language by reading enormous amounts of text.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.