ai/

Models, training, prompts and how language models work.

8 results
ai/rag-how-a-chatbot-looks-things-up-before-it-answers.md RAG: how a chatbot looks things up before it answers A chatbot has never read your shop's rules, so when you ask it about them it may guess, and a confident wrong guess is called a… 5 min read · 3 Nov ai/accuracy-why-a-spam-filter-that-is-99-right-can-still-catch-nothing.md Accuracy: why a spam filter that is 99% right can still catch nothing A spam filter that never flags anything can score 99% accuracy when only 1 email in 100 is spam. So what should you measure instead? This… 6 min read · 31 Oct ai/gradient-descent-how-a-computer-learns-a-number-by-rolling-downhill.md Gradient descent: how a computer learns a number by rolling downhill How does a computer learn a number? It can't solve for it in one go. It tries a guess, measures how wrong it is, and nudges the guess… 5 min read · 21 Oct ai/embeddings-how-a-computer-knows-a-pony-is-closer-to-a-horse-than-a-tru.md Embeddings: how a computer knows a pony is closer to a horse than a truck A computer sees the letters in "pony" and nothing else, yet search boxes can still tell that a pony is closer to a horse than to a truck… 5 min read · 18 Oct ai/temperature-why-a-chatbot-answers-differently-each-time.md Temperature: why a chatbot answers differently each time Ask a chatbot the same question twice and the answers can differ. That is not a bug: the model chooses each next word using chance, and a… 5 min read · 12 Oct ai/overfitting-why-a-perfect-score-on-practice-questions-can-still-fail.md Overfitting: why a perfect score on practice questions can still fail A model that scores perfectly on the examples it learned from can still fail badly on new ones. That failure is called overfitting, and you… 6 min read · 9 Oct ai/embeddings-how-a-computer-measures-that-a-kitten-is-like-a-cat.md Embeddings: how a computer measures that a kitten is like a cat How does a computer know that kitten is closer to cat than to car? It can't read meaning, but it can measure it. An embedding turns a word… 4 min read · 3 Oct ai/how-a-chatbot-writes-one-guessed-word-at-a-time.md How a chatbot writes: one guessed word at a time A chatbot doesn't plan its reply and then type it out. It repeats one small step: look at the text so far, give every possible next token… 12 min read · 1 Oct