AI : What is an LLM?
Large language models are everywhere, from chatbots to search engines. But how do they work, and what makes them so revolutionary? Let's take a closer look.
A new era for AI
In recent years, artificial intelligence has taken a giant leap forward. At the heart of this revolution are Large Language Models (LLM). You are probably already familiar with them: they are behind tools such as ChatGPT and Claude. These systems have an impressive ability to interact with us and with information. But what exactly are they?
Decoding large language models
An LLM is an AI capable of understanding and creating text. Think of it as a digital brain that has read a huge library of books, articles, and web pages. Through this intensive reading, it has learned the subtleties of language and the connections between words.
With a complex architectureâoften based on âtransformersââan LLM can do much more than repeat sentences. It can generate fluent responses, summarize a document in a few lines, translate, or even hold a conversation.
How does it really work?
The functioning of an LLM is based on a simple principle, but on a colossal scale: it predicts the next word. At each stage, it analyzes the context to guess the most likely next word. By repeating this operation billions of times, it constructs sentences, paragraphs, and even entire articles that appear to have been written by a human.
It is crucial to understand that the model does not grasp the meaning of words as we do. It does not âunderstandâ anything. It manipulates probabilities to produce relevant text. The larger and better trained it is, the more accurate and sophisticated its creations are.