AI glossary / How it works

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How it works

A way of turning words or images into lists of numbers so a computer can tell which things have similar meanings.

Think of it as: Map coordinates for ideas. Similar ideas sit close together.

More words in How it works

• Emergent behaviourAbilities that show up in large models without anyone specifically training for them.
• Fine-tuningTaking a ready-made AI model and giving it extra training on specific material so it gets good at one particular job.
• GANGenerative adversarial network. An older way of making fake images, where one network creates and another tries to catch it out, so both improve.
• GPTGenerative pre-trained transformer. The type of model behind ChatGPT: it generates text, was trained in advance on lots of writing, and uses the transformer design.
• Gradient descentThe method a model uses to improve during training: take a small step in whichever direction reduces its errors, and repeat millions of times.