Understanding Large Language Models (LLMs)

A Beginner’s Guide

Afroz Chakure
6 min readAug 10, 2024
Photo by Mel on Unsplash

In recent years, the world of artificial intelligence (AI) has witnessed the rapid rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), transforming how machines understand and generate human language.

From chatbots to content generation, LLMs are becoming increasingly influential in our digital lives. But what exactly are LLMs, and how do they work?

This blog aims to demystify these concepts with simple explanations, making the basics of LLMs accessible to everyone.

What is a Large Language Model (LLM)?

A Large Language Model is a type of AI model designed to understand, generate, and manipulate human language.

These models are trained on vast amounts of text data, enabling them to predict and generate text based on the input they receive.

LLMs can complete sentences, answer questions, translate languages, and even create coherent essays or articles — all by understanding the patterns in the data they’ve been trained on.

For example, when you type a question into a search engine, the system might use an LLM to generate the most relevant answer.

Or when you’re texting and your phone suggests the next word, that’s also the result…

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