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Home └How a language model works: from your question to its answer
How a language model works: from your question to its answer

How a language model works: from your question to its answer

A language model does not look things up in a database of facts: it predicts text from what it learned and from what it has in front of it. That is where its fluency comes from, along with the fact that it does not answer the same way twice and sometimes makes things up. This course opens the box in four blocks and without formulas, so that you know why it answers the way it does and where it is most likely to fail.

Private Course
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Responsible Carlos Pascual
Last Update 2026-10-06
Completion Time 4 hours 40 minutes
Members 1
Basic Data, Analytics and AI
  • Block 1: From text to numbers: tokens and meaning
    3Lessons · 1 hr 5 min
    • Chopping up the text: what a token is and why it matters
    • From token to vector: a map of meanings
    • Block 1 exam
      10 xp
  • Block 2: Attention: how the model uses what it has in front of it
    3Lessons · 1 hr 5 min
    • Attending: every word looks at the others
    • The context window: what it has in front of it and what it does not
    • Block 2 exam
      10 xp
  • Block 3: Training and adapting: what it learned, from where and up to when
    3Lessons · 1 hr 10 min
    • Learning to predict the next word
    • From base model to assistant
    • Block 3 exam
      10 xp
  • Block 4: Generating: why it answers this way and why it sometimes makes things up
    3Lessons · 1 hr 15 min
    • Word by word: sampling, temperature and different answers
    • Making things up with aplomb: where a false fact comes from
    • Block 4 exam
      10 xp