Think Together · Start with a Short Story
The girl writes, “Put the apple in the basket. It is very red.” The robot needs the sentence context to tell which words are related.
Lay Out the Process
- Split the textGet tokens
- Numerical representationPass it into the model
- Use the contextWork out relationships between words
- Produce a task resultAnswer or continue the text
A language model turns text into numerical representations and calculates relationships in context.
It does not silently read each word with eyes like a person. “Read” is a convenient way to describe processing text information.
The same word can mean different things in different sentences. The surrounding content affects the model's representation and what it produces next.
Now You Try
Does the word “Apple” mean the same thing in a fruit basket and in a phone description?
Ready? Open this to see the explanation
Not necessarily. Context gives clues that can distinguish fruit from a company or brand.
One Idea to Take Away
A language model turns text into numerical representations and calculates relationships in context.
Try covering the diagram above and explaining each step to someone in your family. If one step is hard to explain, return to that card and look again.