What Are Large Language Models (LLMs) and How Do They Work?

Large Language Models are AI systems trained on massive amounts of text - we're talking about most of the internet, books, articles, and code repositories. They learn patterns in how humans write and communicate.

LLMs don’t think - they’re more like an incredibly sophisticated autocomplete. Except where autocomplete suggests a word or two, LLMs go further. Entire paragraphs, maintaining context and style throughout.

When ChatGPT produces a marketing email, it doesn’t have a database of pre-written emails - or even a database of marketing principles. It's predicting what words should come next based on millions of marketing emails it saw during training.

LLMs Don’t Actually "Know" Anything

LLMs don't store facts like a database. They don’t “know” anything - they don't even "know" that Paris is the capital of France. They’ve seen that pattern so many times that they “confidently” predict it!