Hello everyone,

So unless you have been living under a rock for the last six months I'm sure by now you've seen the words 'Artificial Intelligence' quite frequently. If you're a sci-fi fan like myself those words definitely peaked your curiosity, but now you might be wondering how does this work? That exact thought is what lead me to write this post. So let's take a dive into the world of Large Language Models, understanding what they are and how they work.

What are Large Language Models?

According to a recent article published by Adrian Tam, A large language model is a trained deep-learning model that understands and generates text in a human-like fashion. In recent developments this concept has been taken to the next level. With massive networks with millions of parameters enables these models to generate on a grand scale. They possess the ability to learn patterns, semantics, and context from vast amounts of data. Some examples of popular LLMs are GPT-3 and GPT-4 by OpenAI, LaMDA and PaLM by Google, and LLaMA by Meta.

How Large Language Models Work?

LLMs have two primary phases: pre-training and fine-tuning.

Pre-training: The training process begins with gathering, pre-processing, and cleaning the training dataset which can come from various sources, such as books, websites, articles, and other open datasets. It learns by predicting the next word in a sentence taking in the structure of language. The model uses transformer architectures, which capture long-range dependencies and context.

Source: AIMultiple

Fine-tuning: During fine-tuning the models are trained on specific tasks or domains using labeled datasets. For example, a large language model might be fine-tuned for tasks like sentiment analysis in product reviews, predicting stock prices based on financial news, or identifying symptoms of diseases in medical texts. By fine-tuning the model becomes specialized in a particular application while retaining its broad understanding of language.

Source: AssemblyAI

Conclusion

Large Language Models (LLMs) are game changers in the field of machine learning. The ability they possess to comprehend and generate human language on such a large scale will open the door for incredible innovations. The more advancements made with this technology could potentially transform many industries. We are witnessing the beginning stages of something amazing!